Pall, Biotrace sign global pact to market air monitoring technology

Pall Corporation has entered into an agreement with Biotrace International Plc giving Pall exclusive global marketing and distribution rights to the range of Ascotec environmental air monitoring products for the pharmaceutical industry. As part of the worldwide agreement, the two companies will also work together on the development of additional innovative products for the rapid detection of contamination. Microbiological monitoring of manufacturing processes is critical to ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and product safety.

The agreement will provide the industry the ability to access the Ascotec air monitoring technologies to enable them better to achieve the goals of the US FDA Process Analytical Technology (PAT) initiative. The PAT initiative encourages manufacturers to adopt new analytical technologies for better control manufacturing processes and provide greater assurances of product safety.

BD inks licensing pact with sanofi pasteur

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) has entered into an agreement with sanofi pasteur, the vaccines business of the sanofi-aventis Group, to license the BD Micro-Delivery System for use in the administration of sanofi pasteur's human vaccine products.

Most vaccines are delivered via intramuscular injection. This BD patented technology provides a new method of delivering vaccine into the upper layer of the skin. The results of early-phase clinical research have shown that this method of delivery has the potential to improve the immunogenicity and efficiency of the delivered vaccine.

The BD Micro-Delivery System is designed to be pre-filled with vaccine and to easily and reliably deliver the vaccine to the skin. The system features a microneedle. Clinical testing indicates that the microneedle is barely perceptible when it enters the skin.

As per the agreement, BD will be compensated for use of the BD Micro-Delivery System provided to sanofi pasteur, which will develop, manufacture and commercialize the vaccine-filled BD Micro-Delivery Systems. The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Yasham introduces MicroBioLogics's products

Yasham Life Sciences, a flagship company of Yasham Group, will be launching the products of MicroBioLogics of USA in India.

MicroBioLogics is a producer of lyophilized microorganisms for quality control in microbiology laboratories worldwide. Specializing in clinical, industrial, food quality, environmental and educational markets, there are over 3,000 items in the product line with more than 500 different lyophilized microorganism strains. MicroBioLogics' products support microbiology quality assurance programs and serve as quality control challenges. Currently, its products support four basic areas of quality assurance: laboratory, procedure, product and personnel performances. Through Yasham Life Sciences, MicroBioLogics is spreading its activities in India.

Vivek Kadam, CEO, Yasham Life Sciences, said, "With a strength of 21 employees (five technical and 10 sales), we have set up offices at Hyderabad, Delhi besides Mumbai. And soon we will be expanding our network to Bangalore and Pune."

PerkinElmer, Luminex to develop solutions for disease screening

PerkinElmer, a provider of drug discovery, life science research, and analytical solutions, and Luminex (R) Corporation, a multiplex solution developer, signed a long-term licensing agreement to provide PerkinElmer access to Luminex's xMAP(R) technology and assay development capabilities of the Luminex Bioscience Group.

Under the terms of the agreement, PerkinElmer will utilize Luminex's xMAP technology in several areas of life science research and in vitro diagnostics. Focus areas are expected to include biomarker panels for pharmaceutical development and ADME/Tox as well as developing in vitro diagnostics in maternal, neonatal and prenatal health. PerkinElmer also plans to standardize its multiplex assay development on the Luminex xMAP platform.

Demand for multiplex testing, or performing multiple biomedical tests on a single sample, continues to accelerate for disease screening and discovery markets. To meet this need, PerkinElmer plans to offer the Luminex xMAP platform as part of its strategy to provide its customers leading products and solutions in the area of high volume disease screening.

Whatman announces combination of two promising technologies

Whatman plc, a global player in separations and protein array technology, announced that the combination of two promising technologies, Whatman/Schleicher & Schuell FAST Slides and the Protagen AG UNIclone human protein expression library, has enabled the discovery of novel autoantigens associated with the autoimmune disease alopecia areata. The results of the study were published in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics 4:1382-1390 and they suggest that these two resources, used in tandem, will help scientists understand better the causes of various autoimmune diseases. Ultimately, innovations in this area will lead to significant advances in patient diagnosis and treatment.

Advances in protein array technology are allowing scientists to target specific genes from the tens of thousands discovered in 2003 by the Human Genome Project. The success of Protagen AG and Ruhr University Bochum teams in their analysis of alopecia areata suggests that the combination of cDNA expression libraries and protein microarrays will lead to increased understanding of many other autoimmune diseases, including diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis.