Laboratory Equipment

Building a Bridge Across the “Valley of Death”: Strategies to Help Support Technology Development

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On Thursday 6 September 2018 at the annual BioProcess International Conference in Boston, the first “Technology Round Robin Featuring Six Innovative Bioprocess Technologies” was presented in an interactive session with attendees as active participants, asking questions and engaging in conversation with the six featured entrepreneurs. Detailed below, this session was a culmination of several steps in an overall strategy for some of the companies participating. To fully appreciate the launch of new technologies into the bioprocess arena, you first must…

December 14, 2018

Speeding Characterization of Biologics: Replace Traditional Assay Technologies with Label-Free Quantification and Kinetics

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FortéBio’s Octet instruments are an ideal replacement for ELISA, HPLC, and SPR techniques in quantification of antibodies and recombinant proteins and in testing product potency for lot release. Bio-Layer Interferometry (BLI) technology monitors biomolecular interactions in real time to determine affinity, kinetics, and concentration. The plate-based, microfluidics-free format offers users several distinct advantages over other technologies. BLI-based systems can achieve higher throughput, with the flexibility to measure two to 96 samples simultaneously. Lower maintenance requirements and increased ease-of-use further shorten…

December 14, 2018

A Novel 3D Culture System for High-Throughput Hepatoxicity Screening

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Cells grown as three-dimensional (3D) spheroids are thought to more closely mimic in vivo physiology in terms of morphology, structural complexity, and phenotype. Being more physiologically relevant, 3D cultures can be highly predictive for compound profiling and evaluating cytotoxicity, a critical step in evaluating chemotherapeutic drug candidates. Unfortunately, evaluation of drug cytotoxicity traditionally has relied on the use of two-dimensional (2D) cell culture monolayers. When grown in monolayers, cells are not exposed to soluble gradients, are forced into an apical-basal…

October 20, 2018

Computational Science Changes Biolaboratory Design

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Until relatively recently, life-science research was characterized by test tubes, Petri dishes, and centrifuges. Now, as with many industries, the life sciences are undergoing a digital transformation. Computational science is changing laboratory design. The healthcare industries always have generated large amounts of data. What has changed is the available information technology. With the growth of cloud computing, large data sets — and the high-speed tools for analyzing them — are available increasingly to a degree not possible with traditional servers…

October 15, 2018

Trends in Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls: Next-Generation Technologies and Product Modalities

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New technologies bring new regulatory challenges. The biopharmaceutical industry must be cautious in its implementation of new scientific ideas and technology platforms — no matter how promising those might be. Regulators will look skeptically on any claim that isn’t backed up by good data, and with no solid history of successful use to build on, a company must have all the answers itself. How do compliance professionals anticipate what kinds of questions reviewers will ask when the time comes —…

September 25, 2018

Rapid Generation of High-Producing Clonal Cell Lines: Using FRET-Based Microfluidic Screening for Analysis, Sorting, Imaging, and Dispensing

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Sales of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) are predicted to be over US$125 billion by 2020 (1). Such revenue potential puts significant pressure on the biopharmaceutical industry to reduce timelines, especially to first-in-human trials. Cell-line development represents a large and critical portion of the early development timeline. Whether a developer is using random or targeted integration for introducing genes into a host-cell genome, the regulatory requirement for addressing monoclonality introduces a time and resource-intensive step in this process. Many different techniques are…

September 19, 2018

eBook: Bioprocess and Analytical Laboratories — Proving the Power of Data in Drug Development

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Analytics pervade the entire biopharmaceutical development process — from protein characterization through biomanufacturing process optimization to final-product formulation and clinical testing. Every technical article in BPI requires data to back up the statements made, whether the topic is upstream/production, downstream processing, product development, or otherwise focused. And never mind publishing: Even more detailed documentation is required for regulatory submissions. If a company can’t back up the choices made and results obtained in development, manufacturing, and testing of its biopharmaceutical product,…

May 31, 2018

eBook: Bioinks for Bioprinting — Three-Dimensional Printing in Research and Medicine

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Three-dimensional (3D) printing is one method of digital biomanufacturing for both basic biological research and translational, clinical applications. The medical field has used it to create such constructions as 3D surgical models for preoperative planning, to assist surgeons in their procedure preparations, which improves postsurgical outcomes. Examples here include generation of cleft-palate models (1), orthopedic applications (2), and cardiovascular surgical planning (3). Other forms of 3D printing for biological applications — such as 3D bioprinting — go beyond such surgical…

January 31, 2018

Accelerating Process Development Through Flexible Automated Workflows

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Synthace began as a bioprocess optimization company in 2011, spun out of University College, London. The company worked on multifactorial approaches with 15–30 factors simultaneously instead of seven or eight. The work investigated genetic strain engineering factors alongside process parameters, defining deep interactions between the way strains were designed and the way they were treated in bioprocesses. Those complex experiments gave unique insight into the complexities of biological processes, but they were exceptionally taxing to plan and carryout manually. Automation…

November 17, 2017

CO2, O2, and Biomass Monitoring in Escherichia coli Shake Flask Culture: Following Glucose–Glycerin Diauxie Online

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important parameter in microbial cultures because it can inhibit or stimulate growth under certain conditions. In our experiment, we monitored Escherichia coli diauxie growth phases online and focused on dissolved CO2 (dCO2) and oxygen readings. We assessed diauxic growth in medium containing glycerin and glucose online with the SFR vario system (from PreSens), which optically measures oxygen, pH, and biomass in an Erlenmeyer flask. The shake flask contained an oxygen sensor spot and an optical…

November 17, 2017