Suncombe says it has released a new range of systems, for sanitary and sterile liquid storage, preparation, thermal treatment, and mixing, typically required in the biopharma sector, laboratories and research institutes.
The PureVessel range of systems is certified to ASME and ISO/EN standards for processing biopharma products, complying with all relevant regulations, according to the critical process systems specialists.
The systems have been developed to operate within the hybrid bioprocessing model, in which a bio processing facility employs a combination of single use technologies (SUT) and stainless steel multi use equipment, said the company.
One of the drivers for the transition to single use methodologies is the complexity of the clean in place (CIP) and sterilize in place (SIP) operations of stainless steel multi use equipment, to ensure that there is no cross contamination and all work is developed in a sterile state, noted Suncombe.
There are many advantages in employing re-usable stainless-steel equipment, and to make this usage more practical, the company said it has developed a pre-validated version of PureVessels combined with its PureCIP or MobileCIP equipment.
Suncombe director, Steve Overton, said: “Combining the PureVessel unit and the Suncombe PureCIP and MobileCIP, provides clients with a pre-validated system, taking away many of issues and validation works. This simplicity of operation and ‘plug and play’ start up makes these the ideal combination for incorporating in a hybrid model of single use (SUT) technologies.”
Available in capacities from 10 to 300 liters, the mobile or static PureVessels are modular built and can be equipped with top entry agitators, bottom mounted magnetic mixers, heating and cooling jackets, mounted on load cells, spray devices and instruments with the option of custom design and manufacture for specific requirements, explained the developer.
The units are constructed from 316 stainless steel and Hastelloy for chlorine resistance, it added.
ProteoGenix, a contract research organization (CRO) specialized in biologics discovery and bioproduction, has recently launched its XtenCHO Transient Expression System.
The developer said that, due to its enhanced plasmid stability and optimized metabolism, the new mammalian cell-based expression host achieves up to ten times higher yields with less hands-on time compared to existing solutions.
The new CHO host aims to simplify recombinant protein production and accelerate early phase drug screening.
The firm said the technology has been used and optimized by its experts for the past five years to produce over 3,500 recombinant proteins.
With the ability to perform superior protein folding and human-like post-translational modifications, the CRO said XtenCHO has proven to be ideal for the small and medium-scale production of monoclonal antibodies.
“The new XtenCHO system produces monoclonal antibodies that are indistinguishable from biopharmaceutical-grade biologics produced in stable systems. This eases process scalability and reduces the risks when transitioning from the bench to the clinic,” said Dr Raphaël Hopfner, CSO and co-founder of ProteoGenix.
“We have launched XtenCHO to help speed up the process of early drug development; making it safer, more flexible, accessible and easier to integrate into existing biologics discovery workflows using cost-effective reagents to achieve very high yields,” added Philippe Funfrock, CEO and co-founder of ProteoGenix.
Photo credit: GettyImages/Rafe Swan
Fluence Analytics has developed a new light scattering biotech product that it says was designed in collaboration with industry to serve as the ideal instrumentation for shelf-life stability studies.
The startup, which provides real-time analytics and control products for companies working in the biopharmaceutical and chemical industries, said the new product is called ARGEN-LT.
It comes with eight independent sample cells that are designed to measure the stability of proteins, peptides, and other biopolymers under thermal, chemical and mechanical stress, it explained.
ARGEN-LT also has a temperature range of 0°C to 100°C, making it a very useful instrument for discovery and formulation development teams performing temporal stability studies at low temperatures to confirm shelf-life viability, said the venture-backed developer.
The company said the product was developed in response to feedback from customers and biopharma industry experts that had been looking for an instrument capable of performing temporal stability studies on biopolymers at low temperature(s) to confirm shelf-life viability.
Fluence Analytics said it recently sold the first ARGEN-LT to a major European biopharma company.
“As the industry continues to grow the pipeline of therapeutics utilizing proteins, peptides, mRNA, and DNA based technologies, assessing shelf-life for these hypersensitive biological drugs is critical to delivering lifesaving treatments to patients around the world. Being able to simulate these conditions, while continuously detecting even the slightest changes in stability, is a significant leap forward. This effort is the culmination of collaboration with global experts and customers to deliver a new tool to the development arsenal,” said Alex Reed, co-founder and president of Fluence Analytics.
Jackson ImmunoResearch, manufacturer of secondary antibodies and immunoreagents for the life science market, has announced a new range of detection reagents that the company says offer superior imaging quality.
“The single-domain antibody market is exploding; these antibodies are 1/10th the size of canonical immunoglobulins, making them ideal for drug delivery and super-resolution imaging, among many other potential uses,” commented David A Fancy, COO, Jackson ImmunoResearch.
The developer outlined how its Nano Secondaries are polyclonal VHH Fragment antibodies, available with specificity to Human, Rabbit, or Mouse, and10x smaller than conventional whole IgG antibodies.
“Polyclonal detection reagents continue to offer the best signal strength by amplifying signal, even from poorly expressing targets. Offering a heterogeneous population of antibodies, each detecting a different portion of the primary antibody, the polyclonal Nano Secondary can increase labeling efficiency, resulting in brighter signal. They are available conjugated to reporter enzymes and a range of fluorescent dyes, including Alexa Fluor, providing scope for high-resolution Immunohistochemistry and Immunofluorescence, making them an indispensable tool in both research and diagnostics imaging.”
Photo credit: Derek Sung, MD/PhD Student, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Evonetix, a synthetic biology company, has been granted a European patent covering its binary assembly method for gene synthesis.
It said the patent (EP 3688189 B1) further strengthens the company's IP portfolio and is a key milestone in its strategy to simplify gene synthesis for users and enable a new generation of in-lab DNA synthesis platforms.
Evonetix said its semiconductor-based synthesis chip uses precise temperature control to manage the DNA synthesis cycle at thousands of individually addressable sites across the surface of the chip.
The patented method allows for the assembly of long DNA molecules ‘on-chip’ while also removing synthesis errors during the assembly process, said the firm.
The combination of error removal and assembly processes results in a far greater proportion of accurate gene sequences than through conventional assembly methods, greatly simplifying downstream processing, it added.
Binary assembly utilizes the charged nature of DNA molecules, combined with precision liquid flow, to move DNA between synthesis and assembly sites on the surface of a semiconductor chip, bringing together complementary sequences, according to the developer.
"Thermal control separates error containing sequences from those with correct homology based on changes in melting temperatures. Thousands of sites can be arrayed across a single chip surface, enabling large scale parallel synthesis and assembly."
In April 2022, Evonetix was granted patent EP3551331B1 in Europe for its proprietary thermal control technology for DNA synthesis.
“Our Binary Assembly method is at the core of Evonetix technology. By completing full gene synthesis on one of our semiconductor chips, we can bring the prospect of a desktop DNA printer to thousands of labs.
"Securing this foundational IP across Europe is both a validation of the novel nature of this approach and confirms a key part of the value of the company,” said Matthew Hayes, CTO, Evonetix.
Scipio bioscience, an early-stage company that develops products for single-cell sample preparation and data analysis, has announced that Asteria, a single-cell RNA-sequencing kit, is now commercially available to researchers globally.
The hydrogel-based benchtop kit enables the transcriptomic profiling of 10,000 individual cells per sample, instrument-free, at an affordable price, said the developer.
It allows genomics researchers to perform straightforward, instrument-free single-cell cDNA preparation at their workbench to achieve high mRNA capture and gene sensitivity with low multiplet rates, it added.
Researchers also gain access to Scipio’s analysis software, Cytonaut, which, it explained, is an end-to-end tool, covering pre- and post-processing analysis, as well as interactive data visualization and generation of publication-ready results and figures. “Hosted in a secure cloud infrastructure, it guides the user through the analysis step by step, enables researchers to free themselves from heavy computing resources and let them exploit their data without prerequired knowledge in bioinformatics.”
The combination of the kit and software is a comprehensive end-to-end single-cell solution – sequencing excepted – accessible to any scientist with or without prior knowledge of single-cell technology and bioinformatics, said the firm.
“We are achieving our goal of bringing a single-cell solution to every lab, empowering researchers to use single-cell sequencing unhindered by the technical, logistical and cost limitations of current solutions. With the Asteria kit ready in the freezer for on-the-spot profiling and cloud-based Cytonaut accessible from any computer for immediate bioinformatic analysis, anyone can start generating high-quality single-cell data on their own terms,” said Pierre Walrafen, CEO, Scipio bioscience.
