News

A career opportunity has arisen at Aurox.

We're now recruiting for a 'Product Manager, Life Sciences' to join our team working on the Clarity and Unity product lines.

For full details of the role please see our careers page.

Today, Aurox opened registration for the second Aurox online Conference on Microscopy (ACoM).

ACoM2021 will be held on 18-19 May 2021 and is free and open to all to attend.

For details of the session topics and schedule please see www.aurox.co.uk/conference-2021.php.

Researchers at INL, Portugal have built an experimental set-up around an Aurox laser-free confocal and a Bruker JPK NanoWizard 3 AFM.

The new application note, provides an overview of the experimental set-up which has been used to obtain results on a variety of biological samples including living bone cells.

Read the application note.

Peter O'Toole of 'The Microscopists' blog interviews one of the pioneers of the confocal microscope, Aurox Founder, Chairman and University of Oxford Professor, Tony Wilson in a step into a brief history of how the confocal microscope came to be.

Watch the interview on YouTube

Today, Aurox released the latest version of our Visionary, control software for Clarity.

Visionary 4.3.3 is now available for free download from our web-site by all our registered users.

In collaboration with Linkam Scientific, Aurox is extremely excited to be taking on two new projects at the National Physical Laboratory as part of their Measurement for Recovery Programme.

The two projects will focus on evaluating Aurox laser-free confocal systems for correlative imaging and developing an open hardware/software environment for a Laser-Free Confocal Cryo-CLEM workflow for multi-scale structural bioimaging.

In line with our continued growth we’ve recently recruited Mr Nicholas Brown, who joins the Aurox team as an additional new Production Technician. Nick, starts at Aurox today, 1^stSeptember having previously worked as a laboratory technician and in a maintenance engineering role at BMW. We are extremely keen to help Nick develop his career in this industry, to expand his horizons and to help him seize the opportunities that come with the continued growth of Aurox.

2020 is proving to be an excellent year for Aurox. The business has already grown significantly in the year to the start of August, both in terms of OEM business and direct end user sales of Clarity. Whilst, our Unity product is entering full production with activity ramping up fast.

With this in mind we are now recruiting for an additional Production Technician to join our existing dynamic team. This new role is available immediately and full details can be found on our careers page.

Aurox release an Application News Report on results

Following the extraordinary success of the Aurox Conference on Microscopy 2020 online conference which attracted 1316 unique attendees over the 2 days of talks, each person attending an average of 3 sessions, today we released the edited video replays of all the sessions through our Aurox Limited YouTube channel.

Until now, only a handful of the session video replays have been available through our Webinar platform.

This was because one or more speakers requested not to be recorded in that session.

We have now edited the sessions, to remove those talks and also any issues which arose due to technical difficulties on the day.

We hope you enjoy watching the sessions again on the replay videos and catching up on any that you missed first time around.

Here is the link to our Aurox Limited YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCykKTH2IhFPRtQV0q31LP2w/videos

Professor Alex Corbett, his team and Aurox have today released an application note relating to some recently published work on the use of a novel Remote Focusing system incorporating the newly installed Aurox Clarity at Exeter University.

Read the full application note.

Today Aurox released the programme of speakers, sessions and talks for the on-line Aurox Conference on Microscopy to be held on 7-8 April 2020.

Details of the full session programme.

Register for the conference by visiting our conference sign-up page.

Today,  Aurox released the first circular for its online 'Aurox Conference on Microscopy' (7-8 April).

With the sad cancellation of the 'Focus on Microscopy' meeting originally intended for April 2020 and the prospect of further conference cancellations, Aurox have decided to organise an online conference for the microscopy community.

Intended as a virtual place to showcase research from the field of microscopy, the meeting will include:

• Academic and industrial talks
• Keynote from Prof. Tony Wilson
• New product launches from various suppliers

To register your interest in attending or speaking at the event please visit our conference sign-up page.

Today, Aurox released version update 4.3.2 of Visionary, its laser-free confocal microscopy software.

Visionary is Aurox's proprietary software for instrument control of the Clarity and Clarity^HS laser-free confocal instruments.

For details of the new features and bug fixes included in Visionary 4.3.2 please see our release note.

Registered users can download and start enjoying the new Visionary 4.3.2 software version here.

The Aurox team recently spent some time at Exeter University looking at calcium imaging. During the visit this nice video of a 3 day old Platyneris larvae expressing GcAMP (fluorescing during muscle contraction) was captured using the Clarity combined with a custom imaging system incorporating remote optics.

Dr Alex Corbett commented:

“The flexibility of the Clarity laser free confocal system and the new Micro-Manager plug-in from Aurox allowed us to set up a unique optical arrangement for fast confocal imaging with remote focusing. Even when imaging through our fast Z-scan module, the Clarity was able to provide plenty of signal for fine sectioning”.

Platyneris samples were provided by James Beard and Liz Williams (Jekley lab, Exeter University). Imaging by Michele Gintoli and Sharika Mohanan (Corbett lab, Exeter University).

Aurox's *unity*, the all-in-one, bench-top laser free confocal microscope has today set out on it's first demo road trip around the UK.

We're taking unity to laboratories in some of the major cities of the UK to give potential users a first look at how compact and easy to use unity is. Users will see that it can be placed virtually anywhere and it makes confocal microscopy easier and more accessible than every before.

There is no set-up time, we simply lift the whole system our of the box and plug it in!

• First stop - Oxford

Today was the first stop and unity visited Oxford University New Biochemistry before lunch and the Kennedy Institute in the afternoon.

Coming up are:

• Cambridge
• Nottingham
• Leicester
• Birmingham

If you are based in or near one of the above cities and you would like to see unity please contact us for details.

We're already planning the next road trip, so if you are interested in seeing what unity can do for your research in your lab and you are willing to host us as a local demo for a few hours, please contact us now at: sales@aurox.co.uk

Aurox recently attended the MMC2019 meeting in Manchester, UK. During the meeting Aurox ran continuous live demos of the Aurox unity and recorded some short example videos.

To view the videos of a unity all-in-one-bench-top laser free confocal microscope in action, please visit the Aurox YouTube Channel.

Today, Aurox released version update 4.3.1 of Visionary, its laser-free confocal microscopy software.

Released in time for Microscience Microscopy Congress 2019 to be held in Manchester, UK (1-4 July 2019), Visionary is Aurox's proprietary software for instrument control of the Clarity and Clarity^HS laser-free confocal instruments.

Version 4.3.1 adds new features inspired by the rapidly growing laser-free confocal user community.  These include definable z-stack slice thickness, objective menu selection, an upgraded histogram display and the addition of new supported devices including the Nikon Ti-2, Olympus BX62, CoolLED pE4000 and Marzhauser LStep XY stage controller.

Registered users can download the new Visionary 4.3.1 here.

The Aurox unity just recorded a 3-channel, 150 frame (50 x 3) laser-free confocal 'z' stack in 11 secs.

Recently, at our annual distributor training we demonstrated *unity*, our new 'all-in-one, bench-top laser-free confocal microscope'.

The demonstration included the fast imaging of a mouse kidney section in which a 150 frame 'z' stack was recorded in 3-colours in under 11 secs.

Our distributors were blown away by the Aurox unity commenting:

"Just box it up now. I have users who've been waiting for a product like this."

For further experimental details and to view a movie of the recorded 'z' stack click here.

This week, Aurox have shipped and installed their 200^th laser free confocal spinning disc, a Clarity^HS to Giessen University, Germany.

The Clarity^HS is an ‘add-on’ instrument, which upgrades any suitable research microscope to be a laser free confocal fluorescence microscope. The Clarity^HS simple connects to the microscope port, light source and detector. The Clarity^HS provides high quality research grade confocal imaging without the need for expensive lasers. This means that Clarity^HS is very affordable; especially when applied as an upgrade to an existing microscope. Being laser free, the Clarity^HS does not require any specialist safety training making it accessible to any user and laboratory.

Dr Leigh Rees,
General Manager, Aurox Ltd, commented:

"We are very pleased that Giessen University have selected the Clarity^HS to provide for their confocal fluorescence imaging needs. Equally, this being the 200th Aurox spinning disc that has been shipped and installed for Life Science research is a milestone achievement that the Aurox team are all very proud to celebrate.”

Professor Ritva Tikkanen
Giessen University, commented:

‘’We recently purchased the Aurox Clarity Laser-free Confocal system together with a high-speed Hamamatsu camera. For us, this was the best solution to obtain a confocal microscope, as we already had an old inverse microscope that we could use as the basic unit of the system. The Aurox Clarity system provides us several advantages over standard confocal systems. ''

''We got an unbeatable system price-wise, and the quality of the images is excellent! We are also able to acquire images with super-resolution with our system, which is a great experimental advantage.''

''The Aurox Clarity system provides us a flexible choice among several software programs that can be used for image acquisition and analysis. All in all, this was a good investment with full value for our money!‘’

Team members from Aurox Ltd and Neuro-Bio met for a joint lunch at the newly refurbished Neuro-Bio premises at Culham Science Centre to discuss and plan a future collaborative agreement to share knowledge, expertise and resources. The two companies hope that the laser free confocal technology from Aurox will help to speed up and automate the imaging assays planned by Neuro-Bio to help combat Alzheimer’s disease. The feedback from Neuro-Bio will assist in the direction of development of the laser free confocal systems developed by Aurox for disease research in general.

Phillipa Timmins, Head of Sales at Aurox said:

"This is a fantastic opportunity for our two neighbouring companies with very different skill sets to assist each other in our endeavours. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together"

Today, at the ELMI 2018 meeting in Dublin, Ireland, Aurox Ltd launched *unity*, a new breed of all-in-one bench-top laser-free confocal microscope, designed to be affordable, accessible and easy to use within the life-sciences laboratory.

unity is a compact bench-top instrument which includes everything the life-scientist needs for confocal microscopy, including: laser-free confocal, integrated sCMOS detector, LED based light source, objective lens, motorised XYZ stage and OMERO based image server.  It can be used with a wide range of life-science samples and sample mounts including: slides, multi-well plates, petri-dishes and flow cells.

unity is built around the Aurox structured illumination spinning disc technology, which provides high resolution confocal images comparable to those of significantly larger and more expensive confocal microscopy systems.  unity does this faster, easier and with lower photo-toxicity and photo-bleaching. No lasers means low maintenance, low cost of ownership and no laser safety restrictions, making unity easy to use and accessible to all.

Designed for installation and use in the life science wet-lab; right where the samples are generated.  unity removes the immediate need for travel to a core microscopy facility, benefiting biological sample lifetimes as well as research times and budgets. Ultimately, unity should help speed research.

Prof Tony Wilson FREng, University of Oxford & Aurox Ltd, described unity:

"unity makes confocal microscopy faster, easier, more affordable and more accessible for the wet-lab biologist and medical researcher.”

Dr Sergi Padilla-Parra, Division of Structural Biology, Wellcome Centre Human Genetics. University of Oxford, commented:

“I am convinced unity is a clever solution to bring advanced confocal microscopy to everyone. The future potential for the product is phenomenal.”

Aurox is on a mission to bring the Clarity laser free confocal technology to an ever greater number of applications in microscopy. Wherever, applications are plagued by out-of-focus images Aurox can potentially bring confocal Clarity to give higher quality and 3-D imaging.

The latest step in our mission brings Clarity to the Macroscope. To achieve this, Aurox has worked with Leica to fit the Clarity and Clarity^HS to the Leica Macroscope, whilst also adding device control of the Macroscope to the rapidly increasing range of other manufacturer devices supported within the Aurox Visionary software. The Visionary software makes experimental control and image acquisition faster and easier than ever.

Together, the Aurox Clarity, Visionary and Leica Macroscope can finally achieve higher quality 3-D imaging of typically large specimen samples free from out-of-focus blur.

Aurox have released a new application note in which we report some impressive first Super-Resolution confocal images from the Clarity^HS.

Download the *application note here*.

This week at the Focus on Microscopy 2018 (FOM 2018) meeting in Singapore, Aurox Ltd announce the launch of their next generation Clarity^HS laser free confocal microscopy device featuring fast 100 frames per second full frame video imaging.

The Clarity^HS is the next generation of laser free confocal device developed by Aurox Ltd, which uses our patented structured illumination disc technology to provide high resolution confocal images, quickly and of comparable image quality to scanning laser confocal microscopy instruments; but faster, at a much reduced cost and lower photo-toxicity / bleaching.

Dr Phillipa Timmins said:

''The Clarity^HS can be connected to potentially any suitable microscope, converting the users’ microscope to a confocal imaging instrument.''

''The fast, 100 frames per second allows exposure times down to 10 ms, such that high quality time-lapse z-stacks can be recorded''.

Extremely compact and designed for installation use in the life science lab; close to where the samples are generated, the Clarity^HS removes the immediate need for travel to a core microscopy facility. It combines, accessibility, with ease of use and high speed imaging in a laser free confocal device of significantly reduced purchase price to a scanning laser confocal system and also greatly reduced running costs. The Clarity^HS is maintenance free and contains no lasers.

The Clarity^HS has widefield and confocal imaging modes, with 3x confocal modes, which can be optimised for high signal or high speed. All functions are accessed via the Aurox Visionary software, which provides all acquisition and experiment controls in one quick to learn and easy to use graphical user interface.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Leigh Rees has joined Aurox Ltd as our new 'General Manager'.

Leigh joins us at a critical point in the business and as part of our continued growth plan.

Aurox is currently driving towards the launch of a series of exciting and innovative new products, the first of which is expected in the summer of 2018.

In joining Aurox, Leigh's attention to the day to day running of the business and his focus on sales and marketing activities will allow Dr Rimas Juškaitis (Founder and past Managing Director) to focus on the business's Research and Development activites.

As 'Head of Technology' and board member, Rimas will work closely with Leigh and will continue to lead the RND team with a focus on new and existing hardware and software product development.