The Skin Research Centre (SRC) at the University of Leeds, one of Europe's leading dermatology centres, is making good use of two pieces of equipment available from Don Whitley Scientific (DWS) to rapidly test the effectiveness of new anti-microbial therapies to treat acne, dermatitis and other skin diseases.

Microbiologists at the SRC are using the Whitley automated spiral plater (WASP) and the ProtoCOL colony counter to rapidly process samples containing micro-organisms taken from patients being treated with anti-microbial drugs and topical therapies. The plate counts generated are then used to determine which treatments are the most effective at reducing the number of micro-organisms associated with diseases on the skin of clinical trial subjects.

Collette Lindley, Research Assistant at the SRC stated: "Our validated methods for clinical trials require a large throughput of growth media types and dilution replicates with up to 16 spiral plates for each subject for each study visit. As studies can involve five study visits for up to 100 subjects over a 12-week period, we require a robust and reliable automated system for plate counts. In addition to spiral plates for clinical studies, we also use pour plates and filtration membranes in our in vitro studies. We routinely enumerate skin micro-organisms such as Staphylococcus spp., Propionibacterium spp. and Malassezia spp., and we also test products using Escherichia coli, Enterococcus spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans. Consequently, we use a variety of media types and the WASP and ProtoCOL from DWS provide us with the level of flexibility, speed and traceability that we require for our accredited work."

Lindley continued: "As a UKAS accredited laboratory we are very conscious of issues of data quality. Our clinical trial data is also subject to audit by regulatory authorities at any time. Therefore, we need GLP-compliant electronic records to support our paper information and the ProtoCOL makes it really easy to do this."