Absolute Antibody Ltd., an industry-leading provider of recombinant antibody products and services, has announced a partnership with University of Zurich to offer synthetic nanobodies against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Under the partnership, the original nanobodies and newly engineered formats are now available to the global research community for use as serological controls and in COVID-19 therapeutic development....

Contract research organization (CRO) Radix BioSolutions is using the entire span of INTEGRA pipetting products to streamline its workflows and increase reproducibility. Dr Kerry Oliver, President and CSO of Radix, explained: “Our services cover everything from quantifying biomarkers and reagent labeling services to the development and production of multiplexed assays, and we use INTEGRA products across our workflow.”...

As part of their continuing expansion, Envair Technology has announced the acquisition of Lancashire based fume cupboard manufacturers Total Containment Solutions (TCS) in a deal worth £2 million. The funding, through private equity managers Foresight, takes the total investment in Envair Technology to £8 million. The growth delivered to date by existing group companies ONFAB and Envair Limited has provided the platform for this next stage of the group’s ambition to become the leading global clean air containment company....

Thermo Fisher’s cloud services enable easy, cost-effective, compliant and secure cloud deployment of Thermo Scientific SampleManager LIMS software. Thermo Fisher Scientific has expanded deployment model options for SampleManager LIMS software, offering laboratories end-to-end support of the software deployment in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud...

Tackling a pandemic is a massive effort that calls people from disciplines far and wide. Politicians, public figures and, of course, medical staff are all deeply involved in the response. Hidden just behind the front lines, however, are laboratories that are working to bring these unprecedented times to an end. Here, Lab Innovations 2020 hears from Anthony Cooke, CEO of Cambridge Clinical Laboratories...

As further step into the green future, My Green Lab, a global non-profit organization promoting sustainability in the Life Science Industry through Green Lab Certification and validation of sustainable and energy efficient equipment has certified several Eppendorf ULT freezers (-80°C) to ACT, the Environmental Impact Factor label....

Olympus, a leading manufacturer of high-end research microscopes, and Cytosurge, a precision manufacturer of cell manipulation technologies, have entered a co-marketing agreement to become a complete system provider to the scientific community’s growing need for next-generation single-cell and CRISPR genetic manipulation solutions....

Autoscribe Informatics, a leading global laboratory informatics provider, announced the latest release of the Matrix Instrument Data Acquisition System (MIDAS). This release continues the company’s commitment to helping their customers maximize the value of their laboratory informatics investment. By further supporting the integration of laboratory instruments and equipment to...

Avacta Group plc, the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a collaboration with Integumen plc to evaluate recently generated Affimer reagents that bind the SARS-COV-2 spike protein for the detection of the coronavirus in waste water, to provide a real-time alert system to warn of localised COVID-19 outbreaks...

Merck, a leading science and technology company, opened its M Lab™ Collaboration Center in Shanghai, the company’s largest of nine centers worldwide. “With the booming pharmaceutical industry in Asia and greater emphasis on novel drug therapies, we see an increase in R&D on leading-edge treatments including cell and gene therapies in China,” said Udit Batra, member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science....

A team of scientists at the University of Glasgow has identified a cat in the UK that was infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) in partnership with the Veterinary Diagnostic Service (VDS) of the University’s School of Veterinary Medicine made the discovery as part of their joint research programme...

NanoImaging Services, Inc., specialists in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with a vision to make cryoEM workflows accessible to all, today announced the opening of a new facility close to their San Diego headquarters. The new data collection center is the second facility opening in as many months and serves as further evidence of the company’s investment in growth and ongoing service expansion....

An article in the June 18, 2020 edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology details a timely project at the University of California, Berkeley: how to create a CLIA-certified COVID-19 testing lab from a research lab, in only three weeks. Read more about how we radically reduced a 6-12 month timeline....

The UK Government has recently endorsed the reopening of conferences and exhibitions, releasing a series of guidelines to keep participants safe. To guarantee that these are followed to the utmost standard, Easyfairs, the organiser of Advanced Engineering UK and Lab Innovations, has partnered with SGS, the global leader in the verification of hygiene and disinfection protocols....

Creo Medical has developed its Cool Plasma technology, which has been shown to be highly effective in killing bacteria, with a 99.99% kill rate on tough bacteria such as MRSA, E. coli and C. difficile. Initial testing has shown it to be effective in inactivating the Covid-19 virus. The company believes it could be very useful in decontaminating and sterilising medical equipment, such as PPE and ventilators, and cleaning and sterilising hospital wards, ambulances, and other enclosed spaces, as well as for sterilising wounds.

Medivir AB has announced that it has entered a research collaboration with the Drug Discovery and Development Platform (DDD) at SciLifeLab on potential inhibitors of SARS CoV-2. Through the collaboration, DDD will get access to Medivir’s unique proprietary protease-targeted compound library. The aim of the collaboration is to find potential inhibitors of the main protease of SARS CoV-2, an essential non-structural protein, Mpro, required for virus replication...

Avacta Group plc, the developer of Affimer^® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that it has begun work with the UK government’s CONDOR programme to evaluate and clinically validate the high throughput COVID-19 bead-assisted mass spectrometry (“BAMS™”) laboratory assay developed with Adeptrix. The COVID-19 National Diagnostic Research and Evaluation Platform (CONDOR), recently funded by the National Institute for Health Research...

Researchers in the Hadad Research Group – based within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry – at the Ohio State University are focused on studying organophosphate pesticides in vitro. The group is using INTEGRA’s ASSIST PLUS pipetting robot to streamline workflows and enhance the reproducibility of results....

Bruker's BioSpin PreClinical Imaging Division reports the use of the Bruker SkyScan 1278 in vivo micro-CT system at the KU Leuven, Belgium, to support COVID-19-focused research. This research will leverage the university's expertise in preclinical testing to study the efficacy of vaccine and drug candidates in COVID-19 infection models. These will be some of the first in vivo imaging experiments on COVID-19 models using mice and hamsters...