Major European Pharma Installs 10th ProtoCOL System to Increase Productivity

A top ten pharmaceutical company has chosen to install its tenth ProtoCOL automated colony counting and zone sizing system from Synbiosis. The ProtoCOL systems, sited at the company's vaccine unit in Germany, are being used to speed up testing of new and existing pneumococcal and flu vaccines.

The latest ProtoCOL system at this major pharmaceutical company is being integrated into a GMP facility alongside eight other ProtoCOL systems and will be used to accelerate manufacturing of pneumococcal vaccines by automatically counting surviving S. pneumoniae colonies post OPKA assay. The ProtoCOL is well designed for this because its high resolution CCD camera can detect the tiny colonies produced more precisely than any other commercial colony counter.

The other ProtoCOL system installed at this company is being used in the research laboratories to automate measuring the size of inhibition zones on SRD plates, which determines the efficacy of novel flu vaccines. The system is suited to this application because its software analyses measurements from multiple points around the zone diameter to generate the most accurate zone sizing results.

Elke Hearn, Managing Director of Meintrup DWS Laborgerate GmbH, distributors of Synbiosis systems in Germany stated: 'We installed the first ProtoCOL in this major pharma company in 2001 and since then the productivity of its vaccine testing has significantly increased and its vaccines are reaching the market more rapidly.'

Elke Hearn continued: 'The recent installation of the tenth system in such a thriving vaccine manufacturing facility is a great testament to the fact the scientists there are delighted with the part ProtoCOL has to play in this success. It also shows that there still isn't any other system on the market which can come close to ProtoCOL's ability to rapidly and accurately generate data from OPKA assays and SRD plates in a GMP environment.'