Molecular Devices: A Company Overview

Last Updated on 

July 26, 2022

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Discover More with Molecular Devices

Founded in 1983, Molecular Devices, LLC is one of the most widely used and trusted lab equipment manufacturers in the life sciences industry today.

Molecular Devices mainly provides bioanalytical measurement systems for protein and cell biology in life science research and drug discovery.

Its reliability in scientific discovery and innovation is known far and wide, as shown by its participation in over 230,000 peer-reviewed publications. This is in addition to their expansive product portfolio, platforms for high-throughput screening, and all-encompassing domain expertise that leads to scientific breakthroughs.

While headquartered in San Jose (specifically, Silicon Valley), CA, Molecular Devices has offices worldwide, spanning the United Kingdom, Japan, and Africa. It’s also a part of Danaher Corporation, a company that focuses on, manufactures, designs, and markets professional products and services in the life sciences industry.

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Services by Molecular Devices

Molecular Devices offers various services to support your lab, including a dedicated customer portal, professional services for maintenance, and customization and automation services to ensure you’re making the most of your Molecular Devices instruments. Let’s review some of its main services.

Spectranet

If you run into problems or technical issues when using Molecular Devices equipment, you can rely on its customer care portal called “Spectranet”.

This support portal is an easy-to-use and intuitive self-service portal that allows users to problem solve or troubleshoot their basic issues or questions. Spectranet includes a rich knowledge base, and users can leverage the search feature without waiting for responses from a customer representative. You can find data sheets, installation guides, and other support documents through this portal.

The dedicated customer portal also keeps track of your service plans, instrument details, and submits support tickets should you need further, more comprehensive help.

Customization & Automation

Molecular Devices lends you 30 years of experience to design customized workstations that meet your unique research needs. Its Advanced Workflow and Engineering Solutions (AWES) team delivers automation, customized software, hardware, and optimized assays to ensure instrument limitation does not inhibit your research performance.

The AWES team takes a consultative approach to best understand your application requirements before making an informed recommendation for labware, software needs, and more.

When you’re ready to scale, the AWES team can also help you integrate your instruments into bigger workstations and create the workflow you need to facilitate your lab’s growth with ease.

Professional Services

The professional services covered by Molecular Devices include annual preventive maintenance, instrument qualification, and relocation assistance for your instruments.

The professional services team comprises factory-trained engineers and PhD-level scientists who fully understand your lab’s research and instrument needs.

In addition to Molecular Devices’ impressive breadth of services and expertise, these included features are sure to support your lab’s other individual demands:

  • Digital IQ (Installation Qualification) OQ (Operational Qualification) PM (Project Management)
  • Plate recertification
  • Factory-approved parts
  • As Found Testing

Service Plans

Molecular Devices’ fixed price service plans include comprehensive coverage for all instruments and are meant to eliminate unexpected costs. Plan options include:

  • Performance Assurance Service Plan
  • Essential Protection Service Plan
  • Compliance Assurance Service Plan
  • Option for a Custom Service Plan

All plans aim to optimize your lab’s performance by conducting annual preventative maintenance and verifying all instruments meet operational expectations. Plans also ensure your requests are marked as a priority, so your support requests get fulfilled faster.

By utilizing one of their service plans, you won’t have to worry about the ongoing maintenance of lab instruments; instead, your lab can focus on its next scientific breakthrough.

GxP Compliance Solution

Fulfilling the GxP (good practice) requirements set by the FDA or other regional regulatory guidelines ensures the integrity of your data and the safety of your end products.

Molecular Devices’ microplate readers also offer a full-suite GxP compliance solution for GLP (good laboratory practices) and GMP (good manufacturing practices) compliant laboratories.

This solution includes:

  • A service plan with IQ/OQ services and OQ/PM services for your microplate readers and washers to ensure optimal performance.
  • SpectraTest validation plates that you can recertify annually to maintain your confidence level. Validation plates provide comprehensive, automated, and traceable validation of microplate reader performance for fluorescence, luminescence read modes and absorbance.
  • Software installation and validation services for the SoftMax Pro GxP software to help you achieve full FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance and ensure data integrity.

Products by Molecular Devices

Molecular Devices offers a wide variety of consumables and next-generation instruments that facilitate high-throughput performance and deep learning. With Molecular Devices, you can fill your laboratory with flexible and easy-to-use instruments, with a bonus of automation features to streamline your workflow. Here is a general overview of their product categories:

Product Categories

Read modes offered in a single-mode reader include absorbance, fluorescence, and luminescence.

On the other hand, multi-mode readers consist of standard modes, configurable options, and upgradeable modules. An example of an upgradeable multi-mode plate reader is the SpectraMax M5e, a five-mode reader that is part of the same line as the first microplate reader used in space, thanks to its durability.

  • Cellular Imaging Systems: Molecular Devices offers various imaging solutions for your research needs. The cellular imaging systems Molecular Devices offers is an end-to-end solution that covers both imaging and analysis. With plenty of optional features and modules, these cellular imaging systems allow you to customize your equipment capabilities to your research requirements.

You can see this flexibility, reliability, and ease of use in the high-content imaging platform ImageXpress Micro Confocal, which provides configurable and fast cellular imaging.

Accompanied by its acquisition and analysis software, MetaXpress, the confocal microscopy platform can tackle more complex problems, such as analyzing 3D cell cultures.

  • FLIPR Penta: FLIPR Penta is a cellular screening line Molecular Devices offers for various use cases. The flexibility of this high-throughput screening system stems from the configurable system that you can adjust based on library size, detection mode, screening format, assay, and target. It also offers user-changeable pipettes and configurable optics to fit your research needs.
  • Axon Patch-Clamp: The Axon Patch-Clamp system covers all the components for various patch-clamp techniques, including accessories, amplifiers, digitizers, and the software for acquisition and analysis. The digitizer and amplifier provided by Molecular Devices emphasize high-quality data with high resolution and low noise.
  • Clone Screening: As is the theme with Molecular Devices, its clone screening systems are also highly customizable to your research needs and are specifically designed to streamline your workflow using automation features.

An example of this is the QPix 400 series. It not only automates the sample preparation and plate handling but microbial screening as well. QPix 400’s intelligent image analysis and automation allow it to pick out up to 3,000 microbial colonies per hour, enabling more walkaway time for researchers.

Molecular Devices’ clone screening systems are dedicated to proven techniques for establishing monoclonality, improving the probability of finding rare clones of interest, and the selection of mammalian clones and microbial colonies.

The refurbished instruments are selected, inspected, and reconditioned before being shipped. Furthermore, you still receive a one-year guarantee for refurbished instruments and licensed software to ensure data integrity.

Accessories & Consumables

Besides instruments and assay kits, Molecular Devices also provides many accessories and consumables.

These accessories and consumables are designed to support and expand the capabilities of Molecular Devices instruments. The wide assortment of labware accessories includes cartridges, plates, lids, caps, trays, consumables for calibration, cleaning, sterilization, and more.

Resources Provided by Molecular Devices

Molecular Devices solidifies its excellence in the life sciences field through an extensive resources section. It provides in-depth articles on the technology behind available equipment and shares fellow researchers’ expertise through ebooks, scientific posters, interviews, webinars, and videos.

Molecular Devices divides its resources and additional support into the following categories:

Outfit & Upgrade Your Lab with Excedr

The products and services offered by Molecular Devices make up a complete solution for your laboratory. Along with reliable instruments customized to your lab’s individual research needs, the range of support you can get from the support team is truly remarkable.

However, outfitting your lab with innovative instruments like Molecular Devices’ is not cheap. The upfront dues and operational costs are something you have to heavily consider before deciding to purchase directly from a manufacturer of this caliber.

If you want to avoid a considerable upfront payment, among other hefty fees and dues, consider leasing your equipment instead. Leasing through Excedr ensures access to those same instruments without having to pay the enormous upfront costs. When you lease through Excedr, you can redirect your lab’s funds to other high-priority applications and needs.

Let Excedr simplify the logistics behind lab equipment procurement. We can help provide you with access to cutting-edge instruments and instrumentation from manufacturers like Molecular Devices.

Contact us today to see if we can help you build the perfect setup for your laboratory without the upfront costs that come with it.

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