Optibrium™, a developer of software for drug discovery, today announced the release of the newest version of StarDrop™, a comprehensive software platform for small molecule design, optimisation and data analysis. The new release, StarDrop 7.0, further extends the software’s compound design strategies, provides enhanced workflows, and seamlessly connects with Optibrium’s Cerella™ platform, delivering unique Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to drug discovery scientists....

The Knife Mill PULVERISETTE 11 provides a homogeneous sample in a very short time due to its special design. Each subsample taken from any location in the grinding vessel is representative for the original sample and thus ensures an exact, significant analysis. And that for a wide range of different materials, regardless of whether the sample is dry, moist, soft, medium-hard, fibrous or oily. Ideal for sample preparation in the fields of foodstuffs or animal feed testing, agriculture and forestry, biology, pharmaceuticals and chemistry...

Beckman Coulter, a clinical diagnostics leader, today launched its Access SARS-CoV-2 IgG II assay in countries accepting the CE Mark. The new Access SARS-CoV-2 IgG II assay quantitatively measures a patient’s level of antibodies in response to a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The ability to establish a quantitative baseline to evaluate an individual’s immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus allows clinicians to assess relative changes of an individual’s immune response to the virus over time based on a numerical value....

Porvair Sciences provides a complete design and manufacture service to help customers develop new and innovative custom microplates for specialist applications. Porvair Sciences is widely recognised as a leader in the field of moulding ultra-pure plastic materials such as polystyrene, polypropylene and polycarbonate. With decades of experience and expertise in ultrasonic welding, surface treatment techniques, co-sintering of polymers / silicas, specialist assembly and a strong understanding of analytical applications...

Tomocube’s cutting-edge 3D quantitative phase imaging is set to play a crucial role in platelet research according to a new paper from scientists at the University of York. Using holotomography images generated by the Tomocube HT-2H microscope, the team were able to identify and quantify in single unlabelled, live platelets clear disparities in activation status and potential functional ability in disease states without experimental interference, such as from fixation or labelling...

The rapid spread of the newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus variant B.1.1.7 in Great Britain and other countries shows changes in the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can lead to new biological properties. Most of the approximately 12,000 mutations in the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that have been identified since February 2020 so far did not change the biological properties of the virus. However, some of the almost 4,000 mutations that have been identified in the spike protein....

The 2021 Gilson Product Guide is now available to download. This year, it’s packed with our liquid handling, extraction and purification instruments, enabling verifiable science and making lab life easier for researchers. With the current pandemic, this new guide also features solutions dedicated to COVID-19 research. We’ve consolidated our tools, technology, services, and resources to help scientists as they ramp up testing capabilities or study the virus...

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology now offers the advanced imaging capabilities required for many biomedical applications, but can it replace the more expensive sCMOS (scientific CMOS) sensors? CMOS and sCMOS sensors have set the benchmark for both performance and value in machine vision in several industries, and this article will explain the benefits and costs of each technology for highly demanding imaging applications in biomedical and life sciences....

New England Biolabs® (NEB®) has announced the launch of its Luna®SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR Multiplex Assay Kit for real-time detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid. This research use only (RUO) kit offers multiplex testing of up to 94 samples in a single 96-well plate, with the additional capacity for supporting sample pooling and high throughput applications using 384-well plate test formats....

BioChromato Inc. reports on how Pharmaceutical companies undertaking Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME) studies are benefiting from integrating RAPID Easy Piercing Seals (EPS) into their screening protocols. Optimization of the ADME properties of a drug molecule is one of the most difficult and challenging part of the drug discovery process. The ADME profile of a compound has a major impact on the likelihood of its success as a drug....

Kromek a worldwide supplier of detection technology focusing on the medical, security screening and nuclear markets, announces that it has commenced a £1.25m programme funded by Innovate UK to customise its biological threat-detection solution for the automated detection of all airborne viruses, including COVID-19, to support end-use cases....

Making people stand in front of a scanner to have their body temperature read can result in a large number of false negatives, allowing people with Covid-19 to pass through airports and hospitals undetected. Leading experts in physiology have suggested instead that taking temperature readings of a person’s fingertip and eye would give a significantly better and more reliable reading and help identify those with fever....

Asynt reports how Globachem Discovery (Alderley Park, UK) has benefited from the investment in ReactoMate reactor systems for the scale-up of novel agrochemicals. Globachem Discovery is the UK R&D arm of Globachem, a Belgian agrochemical business. The company operates in the early phases of the R&D pipeline, developing new molecules and chemistries for the agrochemical industry....

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) today announced that its Xevo TQ-XS atmospheric pressure gas chromatography (APGC) mass spectrometry (MS) platform is an accepted alternative for the identification and quantification of dioxins and furans in environmental samples. Dioxins are a byproduct of human industrial activity and their effects on human health are well documented....

BioChromato Inc. has published an interview with the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue University (Indiana, USA) that explains how the Smart Evaporator C1 has assisted them in isolating and purifying novel compounds from DMSO solutions for potential pharmaceutical use. Because the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) does not approve DMSO formulations for human administration, researchers at Purdue University wanted to synthesise a new Platinum (IV) chloride complex...

ZEISS introduces ZEISS Solutions Lab, an innovative service, that provides its customers with rapid access to new applications for their microscopy systems or correlative microscopy suites. ZEISS Solutions Lab enables customers to select, or to drive demand for module-based workflows built on ZEISS software packages for a wide variety of requirements specific to their research needs...

Illumina, Inc. is transforming genomic data bottlenecks into catalysts with the launch of Illumina Connected Analytics (ICA). This new and integrated bioinformatics solution provides a comprehensive, private, cloud-based data platform that empowers customers to manage, analyze, and explore large volumes of multi-omic data in a secure, scalable, and flexible environment.

Autoscribe Informatics took the opportunity in a recent webinar to discuss the much-misunderstood subject of LIMS validation. Within regulated environments LIMS validation is a vital process, and yet is a subject that is open to many different interpretations. Regulatory bodies throughout the world, such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), require that software systems be tested and proven to work as intended....

New research on the structure and dynamics of a branched form of DNA called a three-way junction could lead to more effectively targeted treatments for degenerative disorders like Huntington’s Disease, scientists say. In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, chemists from the University of Glasgow show for the first time how three-way DNA junctions undergo unexpected rearrangements in their structure....