RECENT NEWS

Priorclave has appointed Brennan as its southern Ireland agent with responsibility for sales of its complete range of laboratory autoclaves. Lee Oakley, Priorclave sales director, is delighted with the new appointment as Brennan is well established in Ireland as a major supplier of highly specialised technological equipment to the scientific, medical and industrial markets. Lee comments: “I am convinced this is the right partnership, our steam steriliser range complements their current product range and their knowledge level extremely well.”

As a leading supplier of accessories for microscopy, Agar Scientific has built a strong and loyal customer base. The Biology Department at the University of York is a well-established Agar partner, with the Bioscience Technology Facility providing state-of-the-art microscopy services to researchers of all levels of expertise.

Discovery Park, one of Europe’s leading science and technology parks, has announced the arrival of Genea Biomedx, the Australian in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technologies company to its site. Launched by fertility group Genea earlier this year, Genea Biomedx is developing practical, accessible and precise technology to improve IVF laboratory outcomes.

Cepheid has launched its next-generation Xpert Flu test for the GeneXpert system, a CE/IVD-marked product offering on-demand testing for triage, outbreaks, emergencies and high-risk patient management.

IBMS in Scotland member Diane Anderson met Helena Oldroyd, aged nine, at the 2013 Big Bang event in Glasgow. Impressed by Helena's keen interest in science and her scrap book of hand drawings and photographs of images seen under her own microscope, Diane invited her to tour the laboratories at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Cure Leukaemia helps to bring pioneering drug and transplant treatments to blood cancer patients throughout the Midlands. The charity helps to finance The Centre for Clinical Haematology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, which performs life-saving clinical trials to treat terminally ill leukaemia patients.

Syngene, a leading manufacturer of image analysis solutions, has announced that the lighting and filter conditions in the G:BOX image analysis system have been optimised to allow faster, safer visualisation of proteins on stain-free gels.

A leading supplier of innovative cell culture and consumables for life science, TAP Biosystems, has developed a new method of using microcarriers with its ambr micro bioreactor system. This technique enables scientists to produce uniform microcarrier samples and perform automated media exchange to optimise parameters for culturing adherent cell lines on microcarriers, thus shortening timelines for successfully scaling up manufacturing of vaccines and cell therapies.

A Freedom EVO workstation with an integrated HydroSpeed plate washer and Infinite F200 PRO multimode reader is helping researchers at Jikei University School of Medicine to perform high-throughput compound screening in the battle to combat persistent bacterial infections.

Parkinson’s disease is one step closer to a cure thanks to stem cell research at the University of Bedfordshire. Scientists are now able to identify the contribution of different elements inside a single brain cell that are responsible for the development of Parkinson’s disease.

Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics will showcase its portfolio of diagnostic testing capabilities, from new assays and automation solutions to digital microscopy and online training, at Congress later this month. The Siemens solutions will be available to view on a virtual display and are designed to unite clinical and workflow excellence, assisting laboratories to run as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Lorne Laboratories has announced the appointment of a new managing director to lead the company into its next phase of development. Ian John (pictured) joined the Lorne team at the beginning of July, having spent many years in the automotive industry.

Scientific Digital Imaging’s Synoptics Health Division has announced that a major international healthcare training centre, Eastwood Park, will be using ProReveal, a test to detect proteins on surgical instruments. This will complement training given to sterile services professionals on how to assess the validity of decontamination processes.

bioMérieux has been granted CE marking for its new VIDAS 3 automated immunoassay system. The latest addition to the VIDAS range offers increased automation capabilities and greater traceability, particularly for pre-analytical sample handling.

Medical technology developer Atomo Diagnostics and diagnostics company BBI Solutions have entered an agreement to commercialise AtomoRapid, Atomo’s award-winning integrated rapid blood test platform. AtomoRapid is a convenient hand-held rapid blood test device that simplifies procedures, eliminating the need for complex test kits containing multiple items.

West Control Solutions has released a series of informative and explanatory videos, the first of their kind to discuss temperature control technologies. The videos will prove to be a great benefit in helping customers to specify and install the most efficient temperature control solutions.

Recently, GSTS Pathology hosted its first Innovation Academy event in London. This inaugural scientific symposium welcomed over 100 delegates, offering participants great networking opportunities and the chance to hear presentations from a group of GSTS experts.

In 1983, pre-internet and in a year that saw early public access to mobile phones and the first incarnation of Microsoft Word, Dr Graham Rideal set about applying his scientific experience and expertise to the development of glass microsphere standards, the hallmark of which is absolute reliability and traceability.

The newly relaunched LabsAreVital programme was out in full force at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC), held recently in Houston, Texas, where senior representatives from each of the four global organisations that now make up the Labs Are Vital consortium management board were available to discuss the programme.

Syngene has announced that one of its G:BOXChemi imaging systems is being used at the Wageningen University & Research (UR) Centre in The Netherlands to visualise and analyse bacterial proteins as part of a research programme to understand the molecular mechanisms behind bacterial immune systems.