University of the Pacific professor John Livesey tells us how he uses the OT-2 automated pipetting platform to develop anticancer drugs and train future biologists.
Dr. John LiveseyPacific University A professor for 25 years, he teaches future pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists endocrine physiology and cancer biology, and his research aims to improve understanding of how An understanding of the use of pharmaceutical agents to treat human disease.
Earlier this year, he brought on a new scientific research partner—Opentrons’ OT-2 automated pipetting platform. We spoke with Dr. John Livesey about how the OT-2 can help students feel less anxious about doing lab work, allowing them to focus more on potentially life-saving research.
OPENTRONS: Could you please share a bit about your current research?
DR. JOHN LIVESEY: My research focuses on the process of EMT, which is a biological process closely related to cancer metastasis and spread. In experiments, I place cells in multiwell plates, culture them, treat them with drugs, and adjust pH and other environmental factors. Through intracellular Western procedures, I measured the expression of specific markers during EMT.
OPENTRONS: What prompted you to introduce OT-2 into your laboratory?
JOHN: At present, I know that many students have little experience in experimental operations and do not have much time to practice. Therefore, they usually feel anxious when handling and operating liquids, worrying that their operations are not accurate and in place. . For some students, an experiment takes weeks of effort, and if it fails, they lose much of the semester. They also understand that our budgets are tight, and they worry when they are faced with having to discard a column or row of an experiment in a 96-well plate project, or if they accidentally mix samples or miss reagents during an experiment. The resulting errors resulted in unaffordable experimental costs.
The emergence of the Opentrons automated pipetting platform at this time provides a relatively modest solution to these problems. By investing in automation, students can focus on pharmacology: how to set up processing methods, how to process cells, and how to analyze and interpret data. The OT-2 can assist in many steps, freeing students from actual mechanical operations and associated anxiety.
OPENTRONS: Is your Opentrons automated pipetting platform running smoothly?
JOHN: It went very well! Unboxing, setting up and performing initial calibration is easy. I purchased the OT-2 in May, initially thinking I would need to learn programming, but my first experience with the OT-2 coincided with the release of Protocol Designer and the public beta release, almost on the same day. The timing couldn't be better! I didn't waste a lot of time learning Python or relying on Opentrons for programming.
OPENTRONS: Can you tell us more about how you program the OT-2 using Protocol Designer?
JOHN: The emergence of Protocol Designer is like a timely rain, which greatly solves our problems. I originally thought that with OT-2 we would just develop a few protocols and then reuse them with minor modifications. But the truth is, while I sometimes reuse protocols, we almost always need to make some adjustments to them. T
The emergence of Protocol Designer is like a timely rain, which greatly solves our problems.
Just yesterday I was working with a team of undergraduate students. I spent half an hour the night before developing a brand new protocol for the experiment they were conducting. Halfway through the first run, I realized I needed to make a change. I went into the protocol and modified it for a second group of students to use later in the day. This feature is available and fairly easy to accomplish, meaning you can correct your mistakes relatively quickly. I can't do this if I have to become via Python. This makes the OT-2 more flexible and user-friendly.
The convenience of Protocol Designer allows us to correct our mistakes relatively quickly.
OPENTRONS: What other accommodations does OT-2 provide for your students?
JOHN: OT-2 undoubtedly speeds up the frequency of their experiments and increases their likelihood of obtaining authorship of their research results. Last year, a research student was lucky to complete two or three experiments a semester. Students have only three to four hours a week to work, and a single experiment can take days or even weeks to complete the many steps: an effort that is done at a pace that would never allow a paper to be published or even mentioned on the back of a paper.
With the increased speed and productivity of device applications, we will be able to pool the efforts of multiple student teams to complete approximately 10 to 15 experiments in a semester and publish papers in a more reasonable time frame.
The OT-2 is also a great teaching tool. It enables students to explore research questions more fully. I usually give students a question and ask them to answer it through research, and few students have enough time and energy to come up with an answer. OT-2 provides a valuable learning modality that frees students from pipetting anxiety so that they can engage in this higher level problem solving.
OPENTRONS: Is there anything else you would like to share about your Opentrons automated pipetting platform?
JOHN: Actually the whole process of the project was very interesting. We even gave our OT-2 a name, we called it Pinocchio, because if it was really good, maybe it would become a real pharmacologist. Of course, the computer controlling it is Geppetto.
The students really wanted to work with it and they were very comfortable with it. During the academic year, we have 10 or more undergraduate and pharmacy PhD students using it almost constantly for their research projects - almost scrambling to use it. During the summer, my high school interns designed their own protocols for individual manipulations of cells. Normally, we would do this manually. Now, based on these interactions with OT-2, that student has changed his aspirations and now wants to be an engineer.
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