The latest Business updates from the science industry


by Heather Hobbs 25th Anniversary for Priorclave’s Service Manager


Ranjit Rai is probably the longest serving and most widely travelled laboratory autoclave service engineer working out of Britain. He joined Priorclave within months of its formation, building autoclaves before becoming the company’s only service engineer providing customer support throughout the UK.


Shortly after his appointment to Service Manager, Ranjit celebrated 25 years with the company. Throughout those early days, and as Priorclave has grown into the truly international company that it is today, as senior service engineer Ranjit has travelled to many exotic places around the world including South America, Africa, Asia and he has recently returned from a trip to Vietnam to carrying out Qualifi cation work on recently installed autoclaves.


Of Ranjit’s 25 years with the company, Lee Oakley, Sales Director of Priorclave says “Ranjit is acknowledged by all Priorclave Directors


and senior staff as a key fi gure helping in the growth of our company. He has provided valuable support, not only to customers but has passed on his considerable autoclave knowledge to our global network of sales and service agents. This ensures we can deliver one of the fi nest support packages to our customers, worldwide.”


Ranjit is a fountain of information having worked on and around laboratory autoclaves most of his working life and he is currently involved with many large projects taking place in the USA. His experience started when autoclaves were built using relays and switch controls and he has witnessed the many technological advancements right through to the deployment of the latest modern microprocessor technology developed by Priorclave.


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Partnership


Provides Access to Genotyping Market


Through a new partnership with Illumina, Inc, Analytik Jena has gained access to the growing genotyping market where it is offering a production scale solution to provide ultra-high throughput sample preparation in support of Illumina’s enhanced 96-sample Infi nium® XT BeadChip.


“This partnership further strengthens Analytik Jena’s presence in the genomics market,” said Ulrich Krauss, CEO of Analytik Jena. “We look forward to working with Illumina and their customers to deploy solutions for ultra-high throughput genotyping.”


The agreement is structured as a co-development and co-marketing partnership to provide a turnkey automated sample preparation solution for the Infi nium® XT UHT protocols. The automation provided by Analytik Jena promises ultra-high throughput genotyping, scaling from several hundred thousand to 1 million samples per year. Illumina’s Infi nium family of genotyping assays harnesses proven chemistry and the robust BeadChip platform to produce high data quality, call rates, and reproducibility at a low error rate. With the planned complete solution consisting of specially confi gured CyBio® platforms, scientists will be able to prepare up to six reaction plates (576 samples) with Infi nium XT reagents for 2304 or 4608 sample BeadChip chemistries in downstream processes.


“The CyBio® FeliX system will help our customers optimise their genotyping operations with a more cost-effective, scalable and effi cient workfl ow for production-scale genotyping applications,” said Jason Johnson, Senior Director for Arrays at Illumina. “We were impressed with the robustness of the platform and commitment from Analytik Jena to provide our customers with an exceptional experience to continue growing their business with us.”


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New Centre to Address Antimicrobial Drug Development


Liverpool University has been awarded £630,000 of infrastructure funding by Innovate UK to create the Centre for Antimicrobial Pharmacodynamics (CAP) in partnership with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and North Bristol NHS Trust. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing problem worldwide, and with few new drugs making it to the market, there is an urgent need for new drug treatments to manage infections caused by resistant pathogens.


A deep understanding of pharmacodynamics (the study of how a drug affects the body) is a regulatory requirement for the development of antimicrobial drug treatments and enables the right dose of a new drug to be studied the fi rst time. The new centre will cover a signifi cant gap in the UK’s capability to develop new antimicrobial drugs by providing researchers and companies with access to pharmacodynamics research expertise, facilities and training.


Professor William Hope, University of Liverpool, who will lead the new Centre, said: “Characterising the preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of anti-infective drugs is a relatively recent and mandatory regulatory requirement, which has created a bottleneck for AMR project progression because there is a lack of global skills and capacity to meet demand.


“The CAP will build on Liverpool’s existing strength in antimicrobial


pharmacodynamics and therapeutics research to give scientists access to the skills and equipment they need to advance the development of new antibiotics.”


The facility will be aligned with AMR accelerators in the USA and Europe and will provide a local resource for around 20 UK and 90 global AMR companies. Capabilities will include state-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo models of infection; preclinical imaging facilities; advanced pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK-PD) and mathematical modelling skills, as well as a focus on teaching and training for all aspects of antimicrobial pharmacodynamics.


In addition to the Innovate UK funding, the University will invest in new senior academic posts, while LSTM will contribute state-of- the-art laboratory space in the £24 million Liverpool Life Sciences Accelerator building, which is due to open later this year.


The CAP is also the fi rst project to be announced as part of the newly-launched Centre of Excellence in Infectious Diseases Research (CEIDR) ), a joint collaboration between the University of Liverpool and LSTM.


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Collaboration Seeks to Optimise Bioproduction Cell Lines


Horizon Discovery Group plc has entered into an R&D partnership and license agreement, with AmplyCell SA, to evaluate the impact of AmplyCell’s BOOST cell line optimisation technology on Horizon’s parental GS (glutamine synthetase) null CHO K1 cell line.


To be included in our next issue, send all your News stories to:


heather@intlabmate.com


Under the terms of the agreement, Horizon will make an upfront payment (fi gure not disclosed) to AmplyCell. Upon establishing a positive impact on the CHO cell line, AmplyCell will then be entitled to receive success-based development and commercial milestone payments and Horizon will have the non-exclusive worldwide rights to sublicense these BOOSTed CHO-K1 cell lines to third parties. AmplyCell is also eligible to receive tiered royalties based on the net sales of these sublicensed lines.


Terry Pizzie, Head of Commercial, Horizon Discovery said: “We are hopeful that a successful evaluation of AmplyCell’s BOOST technology will lead to incorporation of this methodology for all future bioprocessing cell lines released by Horizon and look forward to creating a long term relationship with AmplyCell.”


Geoffrey Holsbeek, CEO of AmplyCell S.A added: “AmplyCell is delighted to enter into this collaboration with Horizon. They have already demonstrated signifi cant success in establishing biomanufacturing licensing deals around the globe and we are pleased to be able to support their drive to remain at the forefront of cell innovation.”


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