Greiner Bio-One International

Not every assay benefits equally from miniaturization. If your reagents and cells are relatively inexpensive, reducing volumes may have a limited financial impact.

But when you're working with:
🧬 Precious primary cells
🧪 Expensive reagents
🔬 Complex differentiation media
📉 Limited sample material..volume reduction can become much more meaningful.

Our guide illustrates this with a cost-intensive model: differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) into adipocytes.

The principle is simple:
💡 The more expensive the biology, the more valuable every microliter becomes.
That's why miniaturization can be particularly attractive for cell- and reagent-intensive workflows.
Just keep the full picture in mind: plate price and the effort for assay re-optimization belong in the same calculation.

👉 Before changing your entire assay format, identify where volume reduction could create the biggest impact.
Practical examples and cost considerations are in our miniaturization guide: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yF3nj0

A blood sample does not start its journey in the laboratory. It starts with patient interaction, a collection step, a timestamp, a healthcare professional, specified specimen collection tubes and a series of decisions that all contribute to diagnostic quality.

The question is:
How much of that history remains visible once the sample reaches the lab?

Traceability is often discussed in terms of logistics and compliance. But for many healthcare and laboratory professionals, it ultimately comes down to confidence:
🔎 Can the sample be clearly identified?
🔎 Can critical collection information be verified?
🔎 Can the preanalytical process be reconstructed when needed?

As laboratory workflows become increasingly automated, the concept of a sample’s digital identity is gaining importance. Not only for quality management, but also for process transparency and patient safety.

Greater visibility across the preanalytical process, more reliable documentation and increased confidence in sample identification all begin with the same principle: preserving the sample’s history.

💡 At what point does true traceability begin in your organization?

Reducing assay volume sounds straightforward. But once volumes get smaller, things that were previously minor can suddenly become critical.

Here are five factors worth keeping on your radar 🔎 :

1️⃣ Evaporation It's not just about losing volume – it's about concentrating everything that stays behind. Edge wells are usually affected first.

2️⃣ Pipetting accuracy The same absolute deviation has a much greater relative impact. Dead volumes and dispensing technology become critical.

3️⃣ Signal-to-noise
Fewer cells and less reagent can reduce the absolute signal. Keep an eye on your Z′ factor – not just the raw signal.

4️⃣ Surface effects Well geometry, coatings and compound adsorption have a stronger relative influence when there is more surface per microliter.

5️⃣ Biology Fewer cells per well means more variability. And not every cell type, 3D model or long-term assay translates equally well to smaller volumes.

Miniaturization works best when these factors are considered as part of the assay design - not after problems appear.

Even when spheroids form well, imaging can become the next bottleneck. Thick or curved well bottoms may restrict objective access, make focusing more difficult, or limit the level of detail that can be captured from 3D structures. Moving spheroids into a separate imaging plate may solve one problem, but it can introduce another source of variability.

💡 The 96 Well SCREENSTAR Spheroid Plate is designed to support detailed imaging directly in the formation well. Its recessed COP film bottom of 190 µm with high planarity supports objectives with low working distances and high numerical apertures.

Black side walls help reduce well-to-well crosstalk and background fluorescence or luminescence, while the compact imaging window keeps the spheroid in a clearly defined field of view.

Practical takeaways:
• Support for high-resolution imaging
• No separate imaging plate required
• Reduced workflow disturbance from transfers
• Clearer focus on the spheroid as the object of interest

For high-content imaging teams, detail and workflow simplicity do not have to be separate goals.

👉 Learn more: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yFhLV0

What if you could run more assays - while using less of what makes them expensive? Assay miniaturization is more than simply moving from 96 to 384 or 1536 wells.

By reducing working volumes, you can potentially:
✅ Reduce reagent and sample consumption
✅ Lower cost per data point
✅ Increase throughput
✅ Run more conditions and replicates per plate

But there is a catch: smaller volumes also make assays more sensitive to variability.
With a higher surface-to-volume ratio, evaporation, edge effects, pipetting inaccuracies, surface interactions and a lower absolute signal can suddenly have a much bigger impact on your data quality.

👉 That's why successful miniaturization is not simply about using smaller wells. It's about finding the right balance between volume, throughput, assay robustness and workflow complexity.

How can laboratory diagnostics become safer and more efficient? This is one of the key questions driving Ana-Maria Šimundić, Director Global Medical & Clinical Affairs at Greiner Bio-One. We are proud to introduce her in our Experts@GBO series, where we spotlight the people whose expertise drives practical value for laboratories, healthcare professionals, and patients by improving better processes and safer diagnostics.

💡 With more than 200 scientific publications, Ana-Maria brings deep expertise in preanalytics, quality management, sample quality, error prevention, and patient safety. In her role at Greiner Bio-One, she helps ensure that scientific rigor and clinical relevance are embedded in product development, regulatory processes, and go-to-market strategies.

🩸One of the questions at the center of her work is how laboratories can minimize unnecessary diagnostic blood loss while maintaining analytical quality.

Her recent review positions Sample Volume Management as a structured, laboratory-led approach that combines appropriate test utilization, lower sample volumes, optimized workflows, and improved preanalytical quality. The goal is clear: better protect patients while supporting quality, efficiency, and sustainability in laboratory medicine.

💬 “The preanalytical phase represents a space with enormous potential to improve processes, innovate products, reduce variability, and ultimately make laboratory work safer, simpler, and more reliable.”

Ana-Maria’s work demonstrates what Experts@GBO is about: expertise that does not remain theoretical, but helps shape evidence, strategies, and solutions for real-world laboratory challenges.

👉 Discover Ana-Maria’s perspective on preanalytics, Patient Blood Management, and the future of laboratory diagnostics in the full interview: Experts @ Greiner Bio-One: Ana-Maria Šimundić (https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yDZDf0)

In 3D cell culture, complexity can build quickly. Additional matrices, special formation reagents, and multiple handling steps may make protocols harder to standardize, especially when an assay needs to move from development toward screening.

🔎 The 96 Well SCREENSTAR Spheroid Plate helps simplify this part of the workflow. Its conical well design and proprietary ultra-low attachment surface guide cells toward the center of each well, while gravity supports aggregation into individual spheroids.

Depending on cell type and seeding density, spheroids are typically visible within 24 to 48 hours. Assay-specific parameters can still be optimized, but the basic workflow stays close to what many labs already know from seeding a standard 96 well plate.

What you’ll get:
• A familiar 96 well workflow
• Support for individual spheroid formation
• No hydrogel, scaffold, or additional formation reagent required
• A practical starting point for assay development and scale-up

💡Across labs, one thing is clear: the easier a workflow is to establish, the easier it becomes to compare, optimize, and scale.
Let’s compare notes on what matters most when simplifying your 3D cell culture setup!

Learn more: (https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ymdst0)

🩺 It's World Patient Safety Day!
Every tube tells a patient story. Making sure that story stays connected to the right patient is one of the most important foundations of patient safety.

On World Patient Safety Day, we want to highlight a topic that is especially important to us at Greiner Bio-One: traceability in preanalytics.

Even small identification errors can have significant consequences. That’s why we are committed to supporting healthcare professionals with solutions designed to help reduce risks, improve workflow efficiency, and strengthen patient safety where it matters most.

Our contribution includes:
✅ Pre-Barcoded Tubes that provide unique sample identification from collection through analysis, helping eliminate manual labeling steps and supporting reliable traceability.
✅ Tracie, our digital preanalytics software, which supports secure sample identification, assigns samples to patient cases, and helps users recognize potential errors during the collection process.

While each solution delivers value on its own, together they create a seamless preanalytical workflow that helps increase efficiency, reduce opportunities for error, and support safer patient care.

For us, patient safety is not just a single day of awareness. It is a continuous commitment to supporting healthcare professionals in delivering accurate and reliable results, every day.

💡 Small improvements in traceability can make a meaningful difference in creating safer and more reliable processes.

From self-sampling potential to clinical practice: How can we create scalable, high-quality diagnostic pathways?

Self-sampling is reshaping how we think about access to diagnostics, patient engagement, and healthcare delivery. As adoption grows, one question becomes increasingly important:
🔎How can we translate promising outcomes into scalable, high-quality diagnostic pathways?

Join us for the webinar "A New Era in Clinical Diagnostics: The Power of Self-Sampling – Outcomes and Next Steps" and explore the latest developments with experts from across the industry.

📍 Online
📅 22 September 2026
⏱️ 5 pm – 6:30 pm CET

We're excited to have Ana-Maria Šimundić, Director Global Medical & Clinical Affairs, and Vincent Molenaar, Global Strategic Portfolio Manager, representing Greiner Bio-One and sharing their perspectives on the evolving role of self-sampling in clinical diagnostics.

💡 What you'll get:
• Real-world insights into current self-sampling initiatives
• Perspectives on clinical performance, implementation, and patient experience
• Practical takeaways for laboratories, healthcare professionals, and diagnostic stakeholders
• A look at opportunities and considerations for the next phase of adoption

As healthcare continues to evolve, collaboration across disciplines will be key.

👉 Join the conversation, compare notes with peers, and explore what comes next.

Register here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yjzZQ0