Ahead of the upcoming missions to search for evidence of life on Mars, researchers used Linkam’s HFS600 stage in temperature-controlled experiments to study the formation of mixed sulfates – a key indicator of biological processes on the red planet. NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on Mars on 18 February 2021, to search for signs of life and explore the planet's geology....
LAUDA, the world market leader in temperature control equipment and systems, is expanding its portfolio with the new LAUDA Versafreeze product line. This consists of high-quality ultra-freezers which have been optimized for the extreme requirements of deep-freeze storage. LAUDA thereby meets the requirements of vaccine producers, pharmaceutical service providers, vaccination centers and universities for the safe storage of temperature-sensitive corona vaccines and valuable medicines, chemical substances or biological samples....
The cost of library preparation is one of the biggest obstacles to large next-generation sequencing (NGS) studies, slowing down the pace of insights from infectious disease surveillance, cancer research and beyond. At the Festival of Genomics, SPT Labtech announced an initiative with Thermo Fisher Scientific to co-market solutions that will enable variant detection at a fraction of the cost....
Accelerated Technology Laboratories, Inc. (ATL), a leader in Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), continues the 2021 LIMS Webcast Series on Wednesday, February 17th with LIMS Can Help Your Laboratory Manage COVID Challenges. The webcast will offer guidance on how a LIMS can be utilized to help organizations manage their laboratory operations and support essential workers during the current COVID-19 pandemic....
To accelerate drug development, MedAI, an expert of AI-assisted R&D research company, announces that it has completed the construction of its Artificial Intelligence Drug Discovery (AIDD) Platform. With this platform, scientists at MedAI are now capable of providing innovative solutions for pharmaceutical companies to push forward their drug discovery projects...
Porvair Sciences announce the availability of a new guide that makes selection of the optimum Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) microplate for your application both quick and easy. SPE is a widely used method of sample preparation that concentrates and purifies analytes from a solution by means of absorption, followed by the elution of the analyte with a solvent appropriate for instrumental analysis, with techniques such as LC-MS...
Ziath reports how it has worked with the Hubrecht Institute (Utrecht, Netherlands) which has developed a pioneering automated test robot, called STRIP-1, which can process up to 20,000 samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing in just 24 hours. This makes it much faster than all other automated SARS-CoV-2 testing systems used to date. In addition, all samples can be tracked precisely because they have a 2D-barcode on the bottom of each tube that is scanned multiple times throughout the process....
Beckman Coulter, a global leader in clinical diagnostics, announce the launch of the DxH 560 AL, a tabletop analyser geared to reduce the time and resource constraints faced by small to mid-sized laboratories. With the analyser’s Auto-Loading functionality, closed tube aspiration and walkaway capabilities, users can continually add up to 50 samples, provide safety against blood-borne pathogens and spend less time on manual instrument tasks....
Asynt announce the DrySyn Illumin8 - a new, beautifully engineered, 8-position parallel photoreactor for research chemists. Based upon a modified version of Asynt’s popular DrySyn OCTO reactor, the DrySyn Illumin8 allows users to run up to 8 parallel photochemical reactions at a time in precision borosilicate tubes, up to 6 mL in volume. The unit mounts on a standard magnetic hotplate stirrer enabling powerful agitation and heating (up to 80 °C)...
Huber Kältemaschinenbau presents a cold trap for fast evaporation tasks in the laboratory. The Huber CT50 cold trap offers direct, rapid cooling to temperatures as low as -50°C as well as low operating costs. Its compact design takes up minimal space on the laboratory bench. Thanks to the natural refrigerant, the cold trap works in an environmentally friendly manner....
Cherwell Laboratories, specialist supplier of products for environmental monitoring and process validation, has drawn on its extensive pharmaceutical and related industry knowledge to publish an eBook titled, “Growth Promotion Testing: A Guide to Good Practices” which is available to download from Cherwell’s website. The guide is intended for anyone involved in growth promotion testing of microbiological media, providing an overview of key considerations and best practice for this key quality control (QC) test...
Developed in collaboration with DNA Genotek Inc., a subsidiary of OraSure Technologies, Inc. and a leading provider of biological sample collection, stabilization, and preparation products, the new large-volume protocol can process up to 4 ml of solution directly from an Oragene® 500 or 600 series collection devices in less than 2.5 hours. FlexSTAR workflows are fully automated instruments for isolating genomic DNA from large volumes of whole blood, buffy coats, saliva, cultured cells, PMBC’s and other samples...
BBI’s recently-acquired and well-respected team based in Freiburg, Germany (DIARECT GmbH) has developed two new recombinant antigen preparations produced in Baculovirus transfected Sf9 cells. The antigens Nucleocapsid (N) protein and Spike (S) glycoprotein Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) have been designed as critical raw materials for next generation serological assays....
Avacta Group plc, the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, announces that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Bruker Corporation (Billerica, MA) (NASDAQ: BRKR, “Bruker”) to evaluate the Affimer-based, bead assisted mass spectrometry (“BAMS™”) SARS-CoV-2 assay, that the Group has developed with Adeptrix Inc. (Beverley, MA) (“Adeptrix”)...
In an international collaboration, researchers have characterized the first significant SARS-CoV-2 mutation,N439K, occurring within the virus’s spike protein receptor binding motif (RBM). The N439K mutation, which was originally discovered in the first half of 2020 and is considered to be one of the first important SARS-CoV-2 RBM mutations, because it occurred within the receptor binding domain (RBD) in the virus’s Spike protein that interacts with the human ACE2 receptor...
Venomtech® – a leading UK-based biotechnology company founded in 2010 – is harnessing the power of natural venoms produced by animals to generate compound libraries that are used in drug discovery studies. With a collection of nearly 200 species, from spiders to scorpions and even centipedes to study, the team at Venomtech is using INTEGRA’s VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipette to increase efficiency in the production of venom-based screening assays....
"Transforming R&D: Digital innovation in the pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries," a new report by MIT Technology Review Insights, explores how leading pharmaceuticals and chemicals companies are using artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other digital technologies to transform scientific research and enhance R&D performance. The report, produced in association with PerkinElmer Informatics, is based on in-depth interviews with R&D executives at organizations including Novartis, Roche, Merck, BASF, and Syngenta....
Porvair Sciences has launched a new second generation model of its Ultravap® Mistral - an automation-ready sample evaporator that offers throughput advantages to laboratories looking to optimise and accelerate sample preparation. Designed to remove the traditional laboratory ‘bottleneck’ of solvent evaporation, industry-leading sample drying reproducibility has been achieved by recent advancements in gas injection technology....
ZEISS has introduced a new compact microscope for digital teaching and routine lab work just in time for the International Day of Education, which took place yesterday. ZEISS Primostar 3 is a robust upright light microscope, which is made for daily work in a classroom or in a lab for tissue and sample examination in histology, cell biology, food or microbiology, etc. It is designed for long-term use and extreme durability....
Do you analyse common cannabinoids? This application note shows how you can separate a mixture of 11 of the most common cannabinoids using the robust and reproducible YMC-Triart C18 column. Until recently, cannabis and its derivatives were widely restricted under legislation which stated they had no medical value and carried a substantial risk of misuse. Policy is rapidly changing, and cannabis can now be prescribed for medicinal use in many countries across Europe.
Waters Corporation introduces the OttoTM SPEcialist Positive Pressure Manifold designed to improve the reliability and reproducibility of solid phase extraction (SPE). Equipped with easy-to-use, 21 CFR Part 11 compliant software and programmable pressure profiles, the Otto SPEcialist system provides confidence in SPE results by eliminating common workflow errors, reducing user variability, and documenting each method step to remove uncertainty and prevent duplicative efforts....
Microfluidic technologies are rapidly becoming the method of choice for micro- and nanoparticle production across a number of sectors, from cell biology research to drug development. This approach offers a number of advantages over traditional batch methods, including precise process control, enhanced reliability, and the ability to easily scale up production...