Absolute Antibody Ltd., an industry-leading provider of recombinant antibody products and services, has announced a partnership with University of Zurich to offer synthetic nanobodies against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Under the partnership, the original nanobodies and newly engineered formats are now available to the global research community for use as serological controls and in COVID-19 therapeutic development....
Contract research organization (CRO) Radix BioSolutions is using the entire span of INTEGRA pipetting products to streamline its workflows and increase reproducibility. Dr Kerry Oliver, President and CSO of Radix, explained: “Our services cover everything from quantifying biomarkers and reagent labeling services to the development and production of multiplexed assays, and we use INTEGRA products across our workflow.”...
Tackling a pandemic is a massive effort that calls people from disciplines far and wide. Politicians, public figures and, of course, medical staff are all deeply involved in the response. Hidden just behind the front lines, however, are laboratories that are working to bring these unprecedented times to an end. Here, Lab Innovations 2020 hears from Anthony Cooke, CEO of Cambridge Clinical Laboratories...
A team of scientists at the University of Glasgow has identified a cat in the UK that was infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) in partnership with the Veterinary Diagnostic Service (VDS) of the University’s School of Veterinary Medicine made the discovery as part of their joint research programme...
Merck, a leading science and technology company, opened its M Lab™ Collaboration Center in Shanghai, the company’s largest of nine centers worldwide. “With the booming pharmaceutical industry in Asia and greater emphasis on novel drug therapies, we see an increase in R&D on leading-edge treatments including cell and gene therapies in China,” said Udit Batra, member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science....
An article in the June 18, 2020 edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology details a timely project at the University of California, Berkeley: how to create a CLIA-certified COVID-19 testing lab from a research lab, in only three weeks. Read more about how we radically reduced a 6-12 month timeline....
Medivir AB has announced that it has entered a research collaboration with the Drug Discovery and Development Platform (DDD) at SciLifeLab on potential inhibitors of SARS CoV-2. Through the collaboration, DDD will get access to Medivir’s unique proprietary protease-targeted compound library. The aim of the collaboration is to find potential inhibitors of the main protease of SARS CoV-2, an essential non-structural protein, Mpro, required for virus replication...
Avacta Group plc, the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that it has begun work with the UK government’s CONDOR programme to evaluate and clinically validate the high throughput COVID-19 bead-assisted mass spectrometry (“BAMS™”) laboratory assay developed with Adeptrix. The COVID-19 National Diagnostic Research and Evaluation Platform (CONDOR), recently funded by the National Institute for Health Research...
Researchers in the Hadad Research Group – based within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry – at the Ohio State University are focused on studying organophosphate pesticides in vitro. The group is using INTEGRA’s ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot to streamline workflows and enhance the reproducibility of results....
HDR I Hurley Palmer Flatt completed building services for the the S&I Centre, with brand new consumer health laboratory facilities, consisting of the refurbishment of the existing Kingston Works North, (KWN), office building, as well as creating the new GMP laboratory building and a linking atria, known as the Innovation Pathway. This project is the first milestone of RB’s ongoing £200m investment programme in Hull city...
Are you working with cannabinoids in medicinal products? This application note describes how to obtain a fast separation of cannabidiol and melatonin which are compounds that can be used in medication for sleep disorders. Excellent peak shapes are achieved using YMC-Triart C18 in less than 7 min. Get your copy of the application note now....
A Miele washer disinfector proved a key product to aid the UK Ventilator Challenge in the fight against covid-19. Ford UK is a key member of the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium and pledged to produce 15,000 Penlon ESO 2 ventilators at its Dagenham plant by July. Miele’s PG 8581 under-counter washer disinfector helped to speed up the processing of a vital component to ensure there was no bottleneck in production...
A unique type of blood testing equipment manufactured by a small company in West Wales is emerging as an important tool for understanding how Covid-19 affects the body and for choosing the best treatments for patients. Benson Viscometers designs and manufactures blood viscometers which, put simply, measure the thickness of blood....
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have built an intelligent mobile robot scientist that can work 24-7, carrying out experiments by itself. The robot scientist, the first of its kind, makes its own decisions about which chemistry experiments to perform next, and has already discovered a new catalyst. It has humanoid dimensions and works in a standard laboratory, using instruments much like a human researcher does....
Merck, a leading science and technology company, has announced plans to build a new, €18 million laboratory facility in Buchs, Switzerland to support the company’s rapidly growing reference materials business. This new laboratory will allow us to continue to drive innovation in diagnostics and testing and expand our research and development of analytical standards...
Researchers have developed a family of engineered nanobodies which neutralise the SARS-CoV-2 virus, targeting the viral spike protein in a novel way. The research team from The Rosalind Franklin Institute, working with colleagues at Diamond Light Source, Oxford University and Public Health England, have hailed the breakthrough as a potential therapy....
Accelerated Technology Laboratories, Inc. (ATL), a leader in Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), continues the 2020 LIMS Webcast Series on Wednesday, July 22nd with Our Technology Transformation: A Lab Manager’s Experience. This month’s webcast features the laboratory managers at several ATL LIMS clients sharing their views on how a LIMS...
Xebios Diagnostics, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, manufactures high quality, ready-to-use culture media for microbiological diagnostic applications, and is using DOSE IT to aliquot viral transport medium (VTM) into sterile screw-capped tubes to meet market demand. There has been an unprecedented increase in demand for diagnostic testing to identify cases and track the virus spread...
Merck, a leading science and technology company, has announced that VAR2 Pharmaceuticals has been selected as the European winner of its 2020 Advance Biotech Grant Program. Copenhagen, Denmark-based biotechnology company VAR2 Pharmaceuticals was chosen for its development of a promising novel cancer treatment that has the potential to treat multiple types of human solid tumors....
Point-of-care (POC) testing with screen-printed electrodes allows rapid testing of populations for viral outbreaks – at affordable costs, without the need for trained specialists and/or complicated equipment. A free white paper from Metrohm puts a focus on the viability of electrochemical testing citing a number of recent studies on the possibility of POC testing for viruses of various kinds....
Postnova Analytics have published an informative new white paper that details how multi-detector Asymmetrical Field Flow Fractionation (AF4) and Electrical AF4 (EAF4) techniques are transforming the separation and characterization of viruses and antibodies. Viruses are the scientific story of 2020 with the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic thrusting them to the forefront of almost every person’s consciousness around the world....
PrecisionLife’s unique AI platform has found 68 genes associated with risk of developing severe COVID-19 after analysis of the genomes of 929 patients from the UK Biobank who had a severe response to SARS-CoV-2. Prior to an effective and widely available vaccine, PrecisionLife’s insights may help to identify patients who are at greatest risk of developing the most severe forms of COVID-19....