CILS have worked with Cancer Research to create a durable, printable label for identifying microslides during manual, xylene-based tissue processing.

The laboratory’s existing labels were inadequate for their standard deparaffinising protocols; separating from the adhesive, disintegrating and causing vital data to be lost. While several solvent-resistant label materials exist, most are constructed for automated processes where the xylene, acetone or similar agent will have evaporated before slides are handled by a technician. In the case of the Cancer Research laboratory, manual tissue processing means slides are handled while wet with xylene, causing printed data to smudge on these labels....

Genevac announces the launch of a new website that provides easily navigable access to the company’s comprehensive portfolio of evaporators and concentrators to suit almost any solvent removal application, purchasing budget or productivity requirement.

Located at www.spscientific.com/genevac - the new site offers visitors ready access to an extensive searchable library of articles, technical papers, application notes and videos in the Evaporation Insights Learning Center. Alison Wake, Genevac Product & Marketing Manager commented “We have adopted the learning center concept developed by our parent company SP Scientific who have found this information...

UK technology has potential to bring islet transplant therapy to thousands of patients with type 1 diabetes

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT) and University of Aberdeen, UK, today announce the creation of Islexa, a new company developing a novel technology to produce laboratory grown islets, the organoids responsible for insulin production. The technology could bring the option of an islet transplant to thousands more patients with type I diabetes. Currently in the UK, only 30-50 patients with hypoglycaemic...

FLIR Systems ResearchIR 4.2 thermal imaging software provides researchers and scientists with a state-of-the-art tool for viewing, acquiring, analyzing, and sharing thermal data.

To enable users to get started, and then gain the full potential of this powerful software package, FLIR Systems has created several informative online tutorial videos that may be viewed at www.flir.eu/science/display/?id=55874. Available in 20 languages, FLIR ResearchIR 4.2 software provides a comprehensive set of acquisition, diagnostic and data sharing tools as well as customizable, savable workspaces that allow you to arrange how images, data, charts...

MANUFACTURING software specialist LZ Lifescience has announced a partnership with North Carolina State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC) to help promote and support technology expertise in the biopharma industry.

The Golden LEAF BTEC center will introduce LZ Lifescience’s manufacturing execution system (MES) technology into its biotech laboratory, replacing paper-based systems with electronic batch record (EBR) capabilities to improve performance and demonstrate efficiencies. Reflecting an industry-wide shift towards implementing technology to manage manufacturing operations, undergraduates, graduate...

One of the UK’s leading private hospital groups has selected a Wirral company to introduce innovative blood-tracking solutions across all 31 of its hospitals.

Nuffield Health has selected international software company MSoft eSolutions to implement its award-winning systems. Nuffield has asked MSoft to introduce three of its products – Bloodhound, Sample360 and PPID360. Bloodhound controls access to and from all blood fridges, while a bedside management system allows each barcoded blood unit to be matched with the patient’s barcoded wristband in a matter of seconds. Sample360 is a powerful phlebotomy sample...

University of Leicester involved in study to improve survival rates of stroke victims

The safety of a controversial clot-busting drug has been investigated by researchers, who have shown a modified dosage can reduce serious bleeding in the brain and improve survival rates. It is hoped the findings from the trial of more than 3,000 patients in 100 hospitals worldwide could change the way the most common form of stroke is treated globally. Intravenous rtPA (or alteplase) is given to people suffering acute...

SUEZ Treatment Solutions UK has provided two new water purification units to the University of York’s biology department – backed by a flexible service contract.

The two machines are a Select Fusion and Select Neptune. The Fusion is for analytical and life science applications that need small volumes of ultrapure water – typically up to 50 litres per day – while the Neptune is for higher volumes of up to two litres per minute. Purified water is a vital resource in the department, and is used everywhere from the tissue culture and microbiology labs to horticulture glasshouses...

New research facility inaugurated

With the inauguration of the TUM Catalysis Research Center (CRC), the Technical University of Munich (TUM) sets an international highlight in the field of catalysis research. Scientists from five departments, as well as industrial cooperation partners, will collaborate on research under one roof to meet the challenges of energy and resource saving production of chemical raw materials, fine chemicals and...

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult have released their third annual survey of GMP¹ cell and gene therapy manufacturing facilities in the UK.

The review summarises the capability and capacity of all cell and gene therapy manufacturing facilities in the UK that hold an MHRA-licence. The survey, initiated in 2013 has continued annually following a recommendation by the UK government House of Lords 2013-14 Regenerative Medicine report. The report highlights a number of key changes in the cell and gene therapy manufacturing landscape over the last...

Presents data showing how the system can be used to support batch and high density fed batch microbial screening

Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB) today announced a poster presented at BPI Europe, entitled, ‘A novel automated micro bioreactor for high density fed batch microbial screening applications’ is now available online. The poster details how scientists at SSB assessed the new ambr^® 15 fermentation system as a model for benchtop bioreactors to support development of batch and high density fed-batch microbial cultures...

George Freeman MP, Minister for Life Sciences, has revealed that Life Science businesses in the Northern Powerhouse are contributing over £10.8 billion to the UK economy each year – helping to support over 38,000 highly skilled jobs.

Data published has also showed there are 1,000 life and health science companies in the Northern Powerhouse, with 97 per cent of these companies are SMEs providing a strong supply chain for new investors to the region. It was also revealed that these companies manufacture and export over £8.1bn of medicinal and pharmaceutical products per year.

Analytik, leading suppliers of innovative analytical instrumentation, report on the research program running at the University of Brighton by the Brighton Centre for Regenerative Medicine where a GeSiM BioScaffolder system is being used to develop bionic histological lattices for a variety of tissues for regenerative medicine applications. 

The interdisciplinary character of the BCRM allows the implementation of a research strategy based on the control of biological processes through the means of advanced, biomimetic and bioresponsive biomaterials suitable for minimally-invasive surgery. The surfaces of medical implants and scaffolds are functionalised with macromolecules, thin films and polymeric coatings capable of controlling cell activity at the...

Computer simulations of disease processes and detailed digital models of our organs could provide more accurate monitoring and outcome measurements for clinical trials, according to research being presented in Sheffield.

Researchers and students across Georgia and Armenia are now able to participate in collaborative work with their peers in Europe and other parts of the world thanks to two direct internet links to the pan-European GÉANT network recently implemented through the EU-funded EaPConnect project.

EaPConnect aims to create a world-class regional research and education (R&E) network in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and connect it to the European network. It is in line with the recently revised European Neighbourhood policy that aims for increased interconnectivity and economic development for the European Union and its neighbours. "The project will further...

XEI Scientific Inc. reports on the latest publication from their user group at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

The paper released in the ACS Photonics Journal. The authors describe their work with multilayer molybdenum disulfide and their use of XEI's Soft Clean plasma cleaning system for sample preparation. The research team of Associate Professor Stephen Cronin is located in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering at USC Los Angeles. They focus mainly on optical spectroscopy and electron transport at...

Life science companies combine expertise to enhance transcriptome research 

Takara Bio USA, Inc. (TBUSA, formerly Clontech Laboratories, Inc.), a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc., and Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) today announced a new collaboration to support targeted RNA sequencing. This relationship will leverage IDT’s unrivalled proficiency in the manufacture and quality control of long oligonucleotides and TBUSA’s expertise in developing low-input solutions for...

Researchers at the University of Leicester have solved the three-dimensional structure of a gene repression complex that is known to play a role in cancer

A team of researchers led by the University of Leicester has shed new light on how the regulation machinery that controls gene expression works by characterising a complex known as the NuRD complex. The study, led by John Schwabe, Professor of Structural Biology and Head of Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Leicester and published in the journal eLIFE, focuses on three protein...

Tecan has unveiled a novel solution to help laboratories meet the stringent requirements of regulatory authorities such as the FDA and the EMEA.

The new MultiCheck™ QC package for Spark® 10M and Spark 20M multimode readers comprises a reusable QC plate and accompanying data analysis software, and is designed to aid laboratories striving to fulfill increasingly strict regulatory demands including GLP, GMP, ISO 9001, ISO 13485 or Title 21 CFR Part 11. Enabling verification of the correct functionality of all major components and key measurement modes over...

Particle Metrix, developers of versatile particle characterization solutions for the life sciences, report on the work of the Baur Laboratory in the Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Erlangen.

The Group, which is part of the Translational Research Center at the University, is working to quantify extracellular vesicles in plasma of patients. Andreas Baur leads a group in the Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Erlangen. Their research focuses on the quantification of extracellular vesicles (EV) in plasma of patients. The group has used several different approaches as recently demonstrated in...

Researchers at North Carolina State University, led by Prof. Felix Castellano, have shown for the first time that the photogenerated triplet exciton in semiconductor nanocrystals can be harvested by surface bound molecular acceptors, exhibited by a six-order magnitude increase in the lifetime of the originally prepared excited state.

The research publication, featured in the prominent Science Magazine and titled “Direct observation of triplet energy transfer from semiconductor nanocrystals,” highlights the use of carefully constructed materials and multiple spectroscopic techniques to measure and characterize the triplet exciton energy transfer from cadmium selenide (CdSe) semiconductor nanocrystals, prepared by Prof. Mikhail Zamkov and...

International connectivity available to Algeria?s scientists, academics and students has recently been upgraded from 622Mbps to 2.5Gbps by networking organisation GÉANT and its regional partner ASREN (Arab States Research and Education Network). 

The fourfold capacity increase is an early result of AfricaConnect2, the EU-funded pan-African connectivity project which supports the establishment of research and education (R&E) internet networks across Africa. ?Algeria has been connected continuously to Europe since 2004 - the longest of any partner country in the regional networking projects GÉANT manages?, commented Steve Cotter, CEO GÉANT...