Pall teams with Broadley-James on single-use pH sensors

Pall Corporation has struck a deal to integrate Broadley-James’ single-use probe and flow cell pH sensors in its disposable bioprocessing offerings.

The deal means Broadley-James’ single-use probe and flow cell pH sensors will be made exclusively available through Pall Biotech’s upstream and downstream single-use technologies.

The single-use pH sensors use glass electrochemical technology, meeting international standards, and are designed to include a calibrated buffer storage environment to overcome constraints during pre-integration of glass pH sensors into consumables.

The two firms announced the deal during BPI West in Santa Clara, California, where Bioprocess Insider caught up with Loe Cameron, director of Analytics & Controls at Pall, and Robert Garrahy, VP of Bioprocess Technologies at Broadley-James Corporation  to find out more.

“We work with all of the sensor providers out there, but when we were looking for something for our stir tank reactors and our downstream systems we were seeing the limitations that were out there for single-use pH probes,” said Cameron.

“There are very few pH probes available in the single-use space that are based on the traditional glass electrode technologies. Of the ones that are available, they have shorter shelf lives because they have to be shipped dry, and so we were looking for a solution that would allow us to get all the advantages of that multiuse probe but in single-use space.”

The advantages of Broadley-James’ technology include pre-integrated buffer, she continued, meaning it ships wet, as well as having a much longer shelf-life: two and a half years compared with six to nine months of traditional sensors.

“This helps us on the manufacturing side and helps our customers once it arrives at their sites,” she said. “Also you can do one point calibration without having to take an offline sample which is good for robustness.”

According to Garrahy, this collaboration is attractive from an end user point of view as “it pushes on the responsibility to the vendor and simplifies their focus for manufacturing drugs so they don’t have to worry about having to sterilize the systems.”

While financials of the deal itself have not been divulged, Garrahy said the integrated technologies would not bring any new costs for the end-user compared to conventional pH sensor technologies.