EXCELLENCE - Pharma

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Successful Data Capture in Remote Areas
Pilot work undertaken by Cmed (Horsham, UK) with GSK demonstrated the
utility of Cmed’s intelligent Data Acquisition and Management system in a
challenging geographic setting — specifically, Burkino Faso, Mali, Kenya
and Tanzania. Given that one of GSK’s objectives is to discover, develop
and make available new drugs and vaccines for the treatment or prevention
of diseases in the developing world, they looked to move away from a
dependence on traditional web-eDC, which is negatively affected by the
vagaries of Internet connectivity in remote areas. GSK were keen to explore
the use of Cmed’s Timaeus system, its comprehensive functionality and its
geographic versatility in that setting. A single system, which both captures
and manages paper and electronic data, Timaeus is a “next generation”
application with an architecture that allows wireless communication by all
types of low and high bandwidth mobile (cell) phone technologies. Not only
is it able to function with good Internet connectivity, via web-eDC, but its
ability to communicate over a small bandwidth means it is also able to cope
with the restricted Internet connectivity increasingly found in practice. The
consequent extremely low bandwidth needed to communicate means that
Timaeus can operate in areas of interest where Internet access is, at best,
problematic. The pilot was deemed by all to be “a complete success” with a
clear demonstration that data can be captured electronically — both reliably
and comprehensively — in geographic areas with limited or no access to the
Internet. “We are extremely grateful for the support and confidence shown
in both Cmed and Timaeus by a company like GSK,” said David Connelly,
CEO of Cmed. He added: “We have demonstrated the ability to capture
and wirelessly stream clinical data from many remote geographic areas,
with obvious benefits to data quality and timeliness. The positive reaction
from investigator sites was also a real added bonus.” Write to contact@
cmedresearch.com for more information.
Invitrogen + Applied Biosystems = LIFE
Invitrogen Corporation and Applied Biosystems Inc. have merged to form
Life Technologies Corporation and will be traded on the NASDAQ Global
Select Market under the ticker symbol, LIFE. “This is an exciting time
in the history of Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems,” said Greg Lucier,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Life Technologies. “By combining
these two highly respected brands, we are not only creating a stronger
company, but an industry thought leader, uniquely positioned to help
our customers accelerate and drive new discoveries and commercial
applications. “On behalf of the new management team, I want to welcome
all employees to our new company,” Lucier added. “I am confident that
together we will change the future of life science.” For more information,
visit www.invitrogen.com.
March/April 2009
Foster Fosters a New Name
Foster Pharma, a business unit of Foster Corporation, has changed its name to
Delivery Science, reflecting the unit’s specific core competency in melt extrusion
and markets served. Delivery Science specializes in the melt extrusion blending
of active ingredients and polymers, and provides contract process development,
scale up and manufacturing services in a cGMP cleanroom environment. The
company serves start-up through to top tier companies in pharmaceutical,
combination medical device and nutritional markets. Services include blending
APIs for oral, implantable, subcutaneous, transmucosal or transdermal dosage
forms. Finished forms of custom blended materials include pellets, powder, fibres
and film (www.fostercorporation.com).
TTP Completes AZ Automation Project
TTP LabTech (Royston, UK) has successfully completed a major laboratory
automation project with AstraZeneca. The project, which took more than
3 years to complete, involved the design and build of a fully automated
system for salt and polymorph screening of novel compounds. The system
completed its SAT (site acceptance test) late last year before coming online
at AstraZeneca’s research facility in Södertälje, Sweden. This unique
system for synthesizing and analysing crystalline materials was designed in
partnership between AstraZeneca and TTP LabTech. The overall objectives
were to increase throughput, to explore experimental space efficiently and
reliably and to automate the analysis of huge amounts of data. The project
has been undertaken in stages, the first of which was a prototyping stage.
This stage helped to minimize risk by tackling those design elements
that carried the greatest number of unknowns, early in the project. The
next stage was the full design and build of a single screening machine to
demonstrate control, functionality and consistency of the basic automated
polymorph screening processes. Now, TTP LabTech has been asked to
replicate the entire system to double the overall throughput.
Dr Philip Blenkinsop, MD, TTP LabTech commented: “This has been
a very challenging project for TTP LabTech, requiring a number of novel
solutions to be developed from both a hardware and software perspective.
The completion of the first system is a real milestone and we look forward
to delivering the next system with the next year.” The AstraZeneca Project
Manager, Matti Ahlqvist commented: “Working in partnership with TTP
LabTech has resulted in an excellent solution. We set a very demanding
specification and are delighted that virtually all the functionality has been
achieved. Now that the first system is up and running for our drug projects,
we look forward to the delivery of the second system and further increasing
throughput.” For more information, visit www.ttplabtech.com.
TTP LabTech successfully delivers a fully automated chemistry
system for salt and polymorph screening to AstraZeneca.