Lab Business November/December 2016

BIOPROCESSING

David Suzuki Maintaining the carbon dioxide balance

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The Definitive Source For Lab Products, News And Developments

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November/December 2016

Protecting bioprocessing from overpressure events

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Making Donated equipment links global science community

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CONTENTS 10 Scientists Can Help Corporate Canada Foster Tech Innovation By paul smith

The Universal Language

Protecting Bioprocessing from Overpressure Events

Seeding Labs is sending donated lab equipment around the world and making connections with the global science community in the process.

Pressure safety management of bioreactors protects personnel and the high value product they are working with.

By Ed Sullivan

By Hermione Wilson

Scientists comfortable in the boardroom and the lab can help guide start-ups and bring them to market.

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standards

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Do the flip!

Read about the latest in the Zika response.

guest editorial 5

regional profile Ideas without limits in Israel 14

Canadian news 6

TPP and CETA impact life sciences 19

moments in time

Canada develops first Ebola vaccine 23

novEmBEr/dECEmBEr 2016

BIOPROCESSING

DavID SuzukI Maintaining the carbon dioxide balance

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Lab ware 20 moments in time 23

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november/december 2016

The DefiniTive Source for Lab ProDucTS, newS anD DeveLoPmenTS

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November/December 2016

Protecting bioprocessing from overpressure events

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Making

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suzuki matters

DonateD equipment links global science community

Championing the Business of Biotechnology in Canada

Virus

Taking a bite out of Zika

Warfare

on twitter at @biolabmag On the Web at www.labbusinessmag.com

@

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Robert Price

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hen hasn’t the world been on the brink?

For as long as I’ve been following the news, humanity has faced extinction (usually self-invented) in every edition of the weekend paper. Today is no different.

I write this column days before the U.S. presidential election. I do not know who will win the big race, but based on what headlines and bloggers say, the world hangs in the balance.

From where I sit, such claims don’t sound entirely unreasonable. And not only because Donald Trump and his belligerents appear to have a chance at taking control of the U.S. government.

No, discontent is percolating in many spheres of life. Whether the world stands on the brink is an open question, but surely the kettle’s whistling.

Most obviously, the whistle sounds in the political sphere. Trump is hot air venting the discontent of America’s mostly white working class, the people who feel disconnected from their ruling elite, who have seen jobs evaporate, wages stagnate and social norms change radically from what they knew and what they thought was right. Writing off Trump’s supporters as one-dimensional bigots, the same way many people write-off the Brexiters as simple-minded xenophobes, ignores the discontent now burying so many people.

The troubles we in the West thought were behind us are returning, as Jennifer Welsh explains in her excellent book, The Return of History. Barbarism has returned, wearing the black cloak of ISIS. Refugees are again fleeing warzones in numbers not seen since The World Wars, creating pressures Western nations, particularly those in Europe, are having trouble managing.

But it is the return of inequality in the form of a financial plutocracy that challenges most directly those of us who feel comfortable in Canada. Inequality erodes social cohesion.

Without social cohesion – that sense of belonging that connects us to our neighbours – what becomes of the social contract, the obligations that bind us to our state and neighbours? Why bother with civility? Why care for strangers?

More than anything, the scale of inequality facing the West puts us on the brink. Ryan Avent, a senior editor at The Economist, paints a dreadful portrait of inequality in his book The Wealth of Humans. As he tells the story, roughly half of workers in the U.S. will see their jobs automated within the next two decades. The shrinking middle class will evaporate, and escaping the rut of joblessness will be near impossible: education won’t help like it used to, “the sharing economy” offers no realistic escape route, and entrepreneurialism will only take a person so far – because who can compete against an automated workforce?

“Something has got to give,” Avent says. The pressure builds and out explodes Donald Trump.

Even if these authors are only half correct, they make an important point: our society is more fragile than we think it is. Little cracks become deep fissures. What starts as a laughable tit-for-tat over personal pronouns on university campuses morphs into an ideological battle that damages the consensus and pits colleague against colleague.

How we react as individuals matters greatly: if we’re all standing on the brink, don’t shove.

Take a step back. Act with more charity and humanity than before. That might sound like preaching, but I take it as true. One of the most generous forms of charity is to listen seriously to another person. People who are ignored become frustrated. They will raise their voices – or their fists.

In difficult times, we need work doubly hard to build consensus. Consensus is a place of agreement, not uniformity of thought, and we must work hard to ensure that our universities, our academic disciplines and the wider community remain places that encourage diversity of thought. Where we find uniformity of thought, we find silence. In silence, there is no need to listen.

The dangers ahead of us require the charity that comes with listening to people with whom we disagree. That might be enough to get us all through the history returning.

Robert Price is the former Managing Editor of this publication. Follow him @pricerobertg. www.labbusinessmag.com

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Canadian NEWS More Money for Canadian ALS Research

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ince the Ice Bucket Challenge took social media by storm in 2014, nearly $20 million has been invested in Canadian ALS research. The ALS Society of Canada (ALS Canada), in partnership with Brain Canada, recently announced $4.5 million in funding for nine new ALS research projects, which includes two large –scale, multi-year team initiatives and seven smaller studies.

A research team led by Dr. Guy Rouleau of McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute has been awarded $2.2 million to study motor neurons and astrocytes created from people living with different forms of ALS via stem cell technology.

At the University of Toronto, a research team led by Dr. Janice Robertson has been awarded $1.6 million to understand whether the most common genetic abnormality in ALS, which occurs in the C90RF72 gene, causes or contributes to the disease through a loss of the gene’s normal biological function.

Other projects that have been awarded $100,000 include a project at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University using a technique in genetic manipulation to develop new zebrafish models of ALS, a project out of UBC using a fruit fly model to study how ALS spreads throughout the body, and a project at Simon Fraser University investigating the link between a substance called adducing and health at the site of connection between motor neurons and muscle.

“Five years ago, the breadth of ALS research we are funding today would not have been possible simply because we didn’t know enough about the disease to be able to ask the kinds of questions that today’s researchers are investigating in their work,” says Dr. David Taylor, Vice President of Research at ALS Canada. “The fact that we now have the ability to explore ALS from different angles reflects the growing body of knowledge about the disease and the increasing likelihood of effective treatments being developed.”

Approximately 1,000 Canadians are diagnosed with ALS each year.

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November/December 2016 Lab Business

Recognizing Leadership in Canadian Research Dr. Grant Pierce, Executive Director of Research, St. Boniface Hospital and The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS were recently presented with the 2016 Research Canada Leadership Award at a ceremony in Toronto, held in conjunction with the Prix Galien Canada 2016 Innovative Drug Product award at the HRF Gala. Dr. Grant Pierce has been a leader in advancing the case for the hope and promise of health research in advancing deeper understanding of factors leading to health and disease. The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS has been pivotal in the fight against HIV and AIDS in BC, Canada, and internationally. The Research Canada Leadership Award was created to recognize outstanding champions of health research and health innovation at the local, regional or national level – advocates who educate policymakers, the media and the public about the health, social, and economic benefits of research and innovation in Canada.

Funding for Childhood Disabilities Research Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation has announced a $3 million gift from The Ron Kimel Foundation Trust to support research innovations for children with disabilities.

The Kimel Family Opportunities Fund will enable Holland Bloorview’s research institute to act on new opportunities that will make a significant difference in the lives of these children. Holland Bloorview’s research institute has been focused on advancing research to help improve the quality of life for children and youth with disabilities. Collaboration opportunities with partners across the academic community often require matched funds from Holland Bloorview.

Research Grant Renewed The CUA Astellas Research Grant Program will be renewed for an additional three years. Astellas Pharma Canada recently announced that through the research grant program, which originally launched in 2012, they will be pledging an additional $450,000 over three years to continue to support Canadian peer-reviewed research in urology, with the ultimate goal of improving patient care. The primary focus of the program is to support research in the area of functional urology such as over active bladder (OAB), lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), pelvic floor disorders, voiding dysfunctions, and neurogenic bladder. Secondary areas of focus could include other urological areas such as community-based research, practice improvement, multidisciplinary management, basic research, etc.

Grant recipients are expected to demonstrate improved understanding of their specific research area and/or contribute to improving patient care.

Worldwide NEWS Treating Autism and ADHD with Music Lessons

Watching Babies Grow A new technology that transforms MRI and ultrasound data into a 3-D virtual reality model of a fetus could soon allow parents to watch their unborn babies grow in realistic 3-D immersive visualizations. Researchers in Brazil created virtual reality 3-D models based on fetal MRI results. Sequentially mounted MRI slices are used to begin construction of the model. A segmentation process follows in which the physician selects the body parts to be reconstructed in 3-D. Once an accurate 3-D model is created – including the womb, umbilical cord, placenta and fetus – the virtual reality device can be programmed to incorporate the model.

Assuring Accuracy of Balances Fibers belonging to the greater forceps pre-musical training are observed (A, B, C). Fibers belonging to the same patients after nine months of musical training are observed below (a, b, c). Photo credit: RSNA

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he benefits of musical training for children with autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have long been known, but a new study has shed light on how it all works. In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), researchers studied 23 healthy children between the ages of five and six years old to better understand how the brain changes as a result of musical training and where new fiber connections occurred.

The study participants underwent pre- and post-musical-training evaluation with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the brain. DTI is an advanced MRI technique, which identifies microstructural changes in the brain’s white matter.

The brain’s white matter is composed of millions of nerve fibers called axons that act like communication cables connecting various regions of the brain. Diffusion tensor imaging produces a measurement, called fractional anisotropy (FA), of the movement of extracellular water molecules along axons. In healthy white matter, the direction of extracellular water molecules is fairly uniform and measures high in fractional anisotropy.

When water movement is more random, FA values decrease, suggesting abnormalities.

Over the course of life, the maturation of brain tracts and connections between motor, auditory and other areas allow the development of numerous cognitive abilities, including musical skills. Previous studies have linked autism spectrum and ADHD with decreases in volume, fiber connections and FA in the minor and lower forceps, tracts located in the frontal cortex of the brain. This suggests that low connectivity in the frontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in complex cognitive processes, is a biomarker of these disorders.

After the children in the study completed nine months of musical instruction, DTI results showed an increase in FA and axon fiber length in different areas of the brain, most notably in the minor forceps. The researchers believe that the results of this study could aid in creating targeted strategies for intervention in treating disorders like autism and ADHD.

Mettler Toledo has developed a simple, threestep approach to ensure that users consistent and accurate results from its balances. The first step is to choose the right instrument. GWP Recommendation, a free of charge evaluation service, helps ensure the balance selected meets the accuracy requirements of the lab’s day-to-day weighing processes. The second step is to control environmental influences that affect the accuracy of the balance. Mettler Toledo Installation Pacs provide professional balance installation and qualification based on the industry and work environment. The third and final step in the three-step approach is to prove required accuracy. GWP Verification demonstrates equipment accuracy and defines the optimal calibration and testing plan.

Panasonic Names New VP Sales Panasonic Healthcare Corporation of North America recently announced the appointment of Murray Wigmore as VP of Sales. In his new position, Wigmore will be responsible for managing a multi-channel distribution and consultative sales team covering North America, South America and adjacent markets associated with the life science, pharmaceutical, clinical and industrial laboratory industry.

Prior to joining Panasonic he was President and Managing Director of Sartorius Japan K.K and Sartorius Stedim Japan K.K. and as VP for the Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry Division for Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Before moving to Japan in 2008, Wigmore was General Manager, Scientific Instruments Division for Thermo Fisher Scientific, Canada.

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Innovation PROFILE Scientists Can Help Corporate Canada Foster Tech Innovation

By Paul Smith

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e all know the stereotype of the scientist: White coat, intelligent, highly detail-oriented and very much at peace in the sanctity off their lab.

However, more and more, we’re seeing another side to scientists – many actually make great business people. The focus and problemsolving skills that make them terrific chemists, physicists or engineers are among the same ingredients that shape great business minds.

And, as Canada embarks on an innovation agenda under the Trudeau government, scientists can play a crucial role helping startups and corporate leaders bridge the cycle of doom that often crushes promising ideas before they can be brought to market and commercialized.

Canada has a long track record of innovation. We are one of the heaviest funders of discovery research in the world. We’re fortunate to have a highly trained and educated workforce. We also have a wealth of budding entrepreneurs with no shortage of bright ideas for new technologies.

But where we often falter is in the critical stages of moving from research to scale-up and commercialization. That’s where many start-ups fall into the gap and fail to get their ideas off the ground. And that’s where scientists who are as comfortable in corporate board rooms as they are in research labs can lend their expertise, guiding start-ups past the risks threatening to take them down before they really begin.

Consider what Michael Schulhof, the former president and CEO of Sony Corporation of America, had to say on the subject in a column in Scientific American.

“Scientists understand the process of critical thinking. They know how to analyze problems by concentrating on the important elements and filtering out the irrelevant,” he wrote. “… They are willing to admit there are things they do not understand and then take the time to find out what it is they don’t know. Business needs that kind of vision and that kind of intellectual courage.”

As a former physicist himself, Schulhof was speaking from firsthand experience of someone who had traded his lab coat for a business suit as a leader of one of the world’s most popular technology brands.

And while Schulhof penned that column more than 20 years ago, it’s as true today as it ever was.

At the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC) we see the power of fusing the worlds of science and business together on a daily basis.

For more than 40 years, Xerox engineered new materials like inks, toners and photoreceptors for the company’s own purposes at the research lab. As the primary advanced materials research and development centre for Xerox’s operations around the globe, virtually every Xerox product in market today has been influenced in some way by the research team in Mississauga.

But over the past four years, we have opened the doors to our lab so

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Paul Smith we can put our experience and expertise to work for other companies, collaborating with them to research and develop high-tech products and bring them to market.

Members of our team have been able to draw on the problem-solving skills they developed in the lab to help startups identify risks, demonstrate the value-proposition of their technologies and guide them through the steps to commercialization.

As much as Canada would benefit from bringing more scientists with deep research and technical experience into the boardroom, we have to also acknowledge that not everyone is cut out for making the move out of the lab.

Mixing science and business requires individuals who can look beyond solving the pure science problems tied to a new product or technology. They have to be able to see the larger picture, where they have to take commercial problems and the challenges of a global market as well.

As Canada tries to reach its innovation potential and improve the country’s overall competitiveness on the world stage, it would do well to tap into the business acumen of the men and women solving problems in labs across the country. LB Dr. Paul Smith is the Vice President and Centre Manager of the Mississauga-based Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC), home to a world-class team of scientists and engineers with broad expertise in materials chemistry, formulation design, prototyping, testing, and chemical process engineering.

By David Suzuki with contributions from Ian Hanington

Carbon dioxide: Pollutant or plant food?

L

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Ian Hanington is Senior Editor, David Suzuki Foundation.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

ife evolved to live within limits. It’s a delicate balance. Humans need oxygen, but too much can kill us. Plants need nitrogen, but excess nitrogen harms them, and pollutes rivers, lakes and oceans.

Ecosystems are complex. Our health and survival depend on intricate interactions that ensure we get the right amounts of clean air, water, food from productive soils and energy from the sun.

Climate change deniers either wilfully ignore or fail to understand this complexity — as shown in their simplistic argument that carbon dioxide is a beneficial gas that helps plants grow and is therefore good for humans. Industry propagandist Tom Harris of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition writes, “Grade school students know CO2 is not pollution; it is aerial fertilizer.” He adds, “Increasing CO2 levels pose no direct hazard to human health.” The unscientific Heartland Institute-ICSC study he references claims, against all evidence, “Carbon dioxide has not caused weather to become more extreme, polar ice and sea ice to melt, or sea level rise to accelerate.”

It’s a facile argument, designed to downplay the seriousness of global warming and its connection to CO2 emissions and to promote continued fossil fuel use. Deniers like Harris and Patrick Moore in Canada extoll the virtues of burning coal, oil and gas.

It’s deliberate deception, rather than an outright lie, as most plants do require CO2 to grow. But overwhelming scientific evidence shows that, along with other greenhouse gases, CO2 causes ocean acidification and fuels climate change, putting humans and other life at risk.

Even its benefit to plants is more complicated than deniers let on. As the website Skeptical Science states, “Such claims fail to take into account that increasing the availability of one substance that plants need requires other supply changes for

benefits to accrue. It also fails to take into account that a warmer earth will see an increase in deserts and other arid lands, reducing the area available for crops.”

A Stanford University study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illustrates the claim’s lack of scientific validity.

After observing plants grown in California over 16 years, under altered CO2, nitrogen, temperature and water levels, researchers concluded that only higher nitrogen levels increased plant growth, while higher temperatures hindered the plants. A study in Nature Climate Change concluded that a 1 C temperature increase will cause wheat yields to decrease by about five per cent, and a French study found higher temperatures negatively affected corn crops.

Another study, published in Science, examined the complexity of CO2 uptake by plants. It found only those associated with particular types of fungi in their roots can take advantage of increased CO2, because the fungi regulate nitrogen plants obtain from soils. Plants such as coniferous trees that associate with ectomycorrhizal fungi can derive benefits from higher carbon dioxide levels, but plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, such as grassland vegetation, can’t. The Imperial College London researchers cautioned that even plants that can take advantage of higher CO2 levels could be harmed by other climate change impacts, such as increased temperature and ozone concentration. Climate change-related droughts and flooding also hinder plant growth.

Burning fossil fuels, creating emissions through industrial agriculture, and destroying “carbon sinks” like wetlands and forests that sequester carbon are already affecting the planet in many ways detrimental to the health and survival of humans and other life.

No matter what inconsistent, contradictory and easily debunked nonsense deniers spread, there’s no denying climate change is real, humans are contributing substantially to it and it will be catastrophic for all life if we do little or nothing to address it immediately.

Recently, 375 U.S. National Academy of Sciences members, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter stating, “We are certain beyond a reasonable doubt… that the problem of humancaused climate change is real, serious, and immediate, and that this problem poses significant risks: to our ability to thrive and build a better future, to national security, to human health and food production, and to the interconnected web of living systems.”

The evidence is clear and overwhelming: Rapid increases in CO2 emissions are not beneficial. It’s past time we started conserving energy and shifting to cleaner sources. LB

www.labbusinessmag.com

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Lab PROFILE

Dr. Vetja Haakuria and his students unpack lab equipment donated

by Seeding Labs at the University of Namibia.

Seeding Labs isn’t just donating equipment overseas, it’s connecting the global science community 10

November/December 2016 Lab Business

Lab PROFILE

the

Universal

Language story by

Hermione Wilson

W

hen Nina Dudnik and her colleagues started Seeding Labs in the basement of Harvard Medical School, they weren’t just interested in giving charity to scientists in developing countries; they were looking to connect scientists all over the world to one another.

Several of the original members, Dudnik included, had spent time working overseas and had noted the great disparity of resources available to scientists in certain parts of the world.

“When I was working in the Ivory Coast we were doing things like reusing Eppendorf tubes and pipette tips,” Dudnik says. “It took months to get journals let alone reagents. We had folks who were going overseas to pick up reagents and bring them back in their luggage.”

Despite these drawbacks, Dudnik says the lab she worked at was doing innovative work on breeding new crops for African farmers. There might have been a lack of resources, but there certainly wasn’t a lack of talented researchers. If they could only bridge that resource gap, she thought, imagine what could be accomplished.

Thus Seeding Labs’ core Instrumental Access program was born. The organization takes on the surplus laboratory equipment academic institutions and labs have lying around and redistributes it. Since Seeding Labs began in 2003, it has shipped 129 tons of equipment worth US$4 million to 45 institutions in 26 developing countries. In 2015 alone, the organization received 67 applications from 25 countries, from which Seeding Labs identified 16 university departments with the most potential “to advance cutting-edge research, expand training opportunities for students, and build the infrastructure that’s critical to a thriving scientific community,” according to its website.

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Lab PROFILE the top three pieces of lab equipment requested are balances, microscopes and centrifuges.

– Nina Dudnik, Seeding Labs

Applications from the universities for lab equipment are reviewed by Seeding Labs staff and an external review involving partners in the development and scientific communities. “We vet universities very carefully,” Dudnik says. “We do a lot of background research, we hold interviews over Skype with not just the scientists but sometimes their technical staff, the leadership of the university, so that we really get a good sense of who the scientists are, what they’re working on, the constraints that they’re under, but also the plans that they have and what they’ve already achieved, and the infrastructure that’s available as well as the support of their leadership.”

While it is vetting applications, Seeding Labs is working with its partners in academia and business to collect lab equipment.

The organization maintains a warehouse of equipment, which is regularly checked for efficacy and quality control. It has also set up an online portal from which the selected universities can go and choose the equipment they need, essentially like an online store.

“That, to us, is a really important aspect of agency for them,” Dudnik says. “We want them to be able to have that kind of choice over what equipment they need [and to ensure] that it meets their needs.”

An analysis done a few years ago found that the top three pieces of lab equipment requested are balances, microscopes and centrifuges, Dudnik says. She posits that this is because these pieces of equipment are important in the training of students at all levels, especially microscopes. There has also been an increase in requests for high-level equipment, Dudnik says, citing realtime PCR machines, incubators, sequencers, and other analytical equipment.

When it comes to shipping the equipment, Seeding Labs has the added complication of making sure it complies with various international customs requirements. Once the equipment arrives at its destination, Seeding Labs doesn’t have the manpower to send someone to install the equipment on-site – it has a staff of nine people – so it advises institutions remotely, leaning on the expertise of the companies that donated the equipment. In the years following, Seeding Labs follows up with recipient institutions about the impact the equipment is having.

Seeding Labs work begins with lab equipment, but it doesn’t end there, Dudnik says. “The equipment is to me, really step one,” she says. “The ultimate aim is that these are scientists who are

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November/December 2016 Lab Business

doing terrific research on important problems and we want them to connect to their colleagues here.”

In order to accomplish that mission, Seeding Labs has made an effort to bring scientists from the labs it has equipped in other countries to Boston, as well as sending Boston scientists overseas to see firsthand the impact Seeding Labs equipment is having.

The opportunity to observe how scientists operate in other countries is a learning experience that goes both ways Evans Changamu of Kenyatta University, and Solomon Derese and Albert Ndakala of the University of Nairobi, went to Boston in the summers of 2010 and 2012 through Seeding Labs’ exchange program and connected with Boston-based computational chemist Lewis Whitehead. Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computer simulation to solve chemical problems, and doesn’t require a lot of equipment. “It’s not a wet lab endeavour, so you can actually do it in resource-limited settings in a terrific way,” Dudnik explains.

Computational chemistry was unheard of in Kenya at the time.

The Kenyans returned several times to Boston and Whitehead visited Kenya himself to set up a computational software training course for scientists from all over Africa.

“It was so popular they had to hold the course twice in the same week,” Dudnik says. “They had planned to do it once but it was so oversubscribed; I think it was 90 different scientists from about six or seven different countries.”

Lab PROFILE

Clockwise from left: Dr. John Muoma inspects the shipment of Instrumental Access equipment destined for his university, the Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) in Kakamega, Kenya. The equipment will allow the Department of Biological Sciences to offer more hands-on training for students and advance faculty research.

Nina Dudnik and Annica Wayman, Division Chief of Research Partnerships for Development at the US Global Development Lab of USAID, at the warehouse with equipment destined for Instrumental Access shipments. USAID's Global Development Lab is a major funder of Seeding Labs.

Dr. John Muoma (center, holding equipment), hands off equipment to Deputy Vice Chancellors Joseph Rotich and Egara Kabaji in front of the MMUST Science Laboratories Building, where it will be housed.

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Lab PROFILE

Above: William Appaw, research analyst at Kwarne Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST) in Ghana tests out an Aflatoxin test strip reader.

Left: Students at the University of Namibia unpacking their donated equipment.

“Often we have this image in our heads that scientists in the developing world are doing things that are just applicable to their own communities or they’re working on, say, malaria, and that’s not relevant to us. But this is really a terrific example of how the science they’re doing is absolutely relevant to everybody everywhere.”

–Nina Dudnik, founder of seeding labs

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November/December 2016 Lab Business

Lab PROFILE Seeding LabS’ exchange program has recently been put on hold while the necessary sponsorship is found to re-launch it. In the meantime, the organization has been holding virtual seminars to connect scientists with one another.

Six years later, computational chemistry facilities have been built at both Kenyatta University and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Recently, the facility at the University of Nairobi received a research grant from Grand Challenges Canada to digitize the structures of natural compounds chemists at the university have been identifying for more than 30 years. The digitized database of compounds, called the Mitishamba Database, went live in 2015.

Seeding Labs’ exchange program has recently been put on hold while the necessary sponsorship is found to re-launch it. In the meantime, the organization has been holding virtual seminars to connect scientists with one another. When it can, the organization tries to facilitate travel opportunities for scientists in resourcelimited countries, since travel funding is another scarce resource.

Being unable to attend international industry conferences means some scientists are missing out on great opportunities for professional development and networking, Dudnik says.

“Science really is a universally language and you can see that people from different parts of the world who otherwise might be really shy at connecting with each other, can connect immediately over their shared nerdy interests,” she says. It’s really been fantastic to see also that some of those contacts have lasted for years... over really great distances and over time led to some interesting science collaborations.”

Dudnik is quick to point out that this exchange of ideas is by no

means one-sided. It’s not about rich Western scientists imparting their superior knowledge to poor, struggling Third World scientists. Researchers in resource-limited areas are often forced to be creative and come up with innovative solutions to bridge those gaps, innovations that can benefit scientists in the West as well.

Take Jamaican chemist Aneisha Collins-Fairclough of the University of Technology for example. A recipient of Seeding Labs Instrumental Access program, Collins-Fairclough wanted to use metagenomics to look at human disease but lacked the resources. She looked around her for the resources that were at handed and lighted upon a landfill that bordered the city of Kingston, Jamaica, particularly leachate ponds filled with water leaching off the landfill. Collins-Fairclough took her students to the landfill and they collected samples to bring back to the lab and do whole genome sequencing on.

It was a slow process since the only centrifuge the lab owned was a microcentrifuge. Collins-Fairclough and her students managed to centrifuge 50 gallons worth of samples in 1.5 ml at a time. “An incredible feat of patience, if nothing else,” Dudnik says admiringly. She’s not the only one impressed. Collins-Fairclough’s work has come to the attention of researchers at the University of Waterloo, who want to use her methods to sample landfills in Ontario.

“Often we have this image in our heads that scientists in the developing world are doing things that are just applicable to their own communities or they’re working on, say, malaria, and that’s not relevant to us,” Dudnik says. “But this is really a terrific example of how the science they’re doing is absolutely relevant to everybody everywhere.”

It benefits all of us to have the entire population of talented, motivated people available working on the problems we all face, Dudnik says, problems like infectious disease pandemics, global warming and feeding a growing world population.

“There’s absolutely no reason we should limit the people who are working on those problems to certain parts of the world,” she says. “We need everybody’s talent, and in particular, scientists who are in the developing countries who are on the front lines of these emerging issues. Who better to be our leading strike force scientifically?” LB

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15

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Application NOTE

Protecting Bioprocessing from Overpressure Events

story by

Ed Sullivan

Pressure safety management of bioreactors protects personnel and the high-value product they are working with www.labbusinessmag.com

17

Application NOTE

O

ver the past 30 years or so, bioprocessing in Canada has grown at exponential rates from the early days of research-based companies springing from life sciences educational establishments to global organizations that rival traditional fine chemical pharmaceutical producers. Indeed, many global players in the drug manufacturing industry practice both fine chemical and bio processing. Bioprocessing activities cover a growing range of market sectors ranging from cell and tissue engineering, vaccine development, agricultural seed and plant treatments, nutraceuticals, and biochemical engineering, both at a research and manufacturing level.

At the heart of bioprocessing, whether research, development or production, processes are supported in bioreactors, which are the vessels in which controlled cell growth occurs, finished product is stored, and from which ingredients such as pure water are delivered. Bioreactors provide a sterile environment in which controlled processes to produce high purity, often injectable, products occur. Whether the process itself requires pressure or heat, or both pressure and heat, that sealed bioreactor will require periodic sterilization to maintain purity. When sealed, the bioreactor is a pressure vessel under ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code rules and shall be fitted with an ASME certified pressure relief device when its design pressure exceeds 15 psig.

The primary means of application for rupture disk pressure relief devices to bioreactors is within so called tri-clamp fittings that are the connection of choice for bioreactors due to their sterility and quick connect / quick disconnect capability. This quick-release, sanitary style of fitting has been popular in bioprocessing since the industry’s inception. Developing rupture disk technology that can be installed on tri-clamp fittings that are conveniently mounted and dismounted for cleaning and inspection purposes was a key design challenge tackled in the late 1980s when bioprocessing was gaining respect at a research level.

Bioreactors are pressure vessels used for sterile processing and storage that comply with ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Pressure Vessel Code requirements, which define an absolute requirement for pressure relief. To meet that requirement, users have the choice between rupture disks and pressure relief valves. Rupture disks feature a much cleaner construction than relief valves and occupy minimal installation space – limited real estate for instrumentation and safety device connection is a challenge on commonly used small volume bioreactors. The superior cleanliness of rupture disks means that this is the technology of choice where sterility is concerned. The ASME Code permits pressure relief valves to be used in combination with rupture disk devices, typically downstream of

18

November/December 2016 Lab Business

the rupture disk device so that the valve does not come into direct contact with the process.

Choosing the right rupture disk

Rupture disks are non-reclosing pressure relief devices that protect vessels, such as bioreactors, from damaging overpressurization (or vacuum) conditions. Rupture disks are available in various designs, sizes, shapes and set pressures.

While rupture disk sizes and pressure settings vary according to the needs of different industries, most bioprocessing applications require rupture disks that are one inch to four inches in nominal size, and provide pressure relief in the 30- to 60-psig range. The dimensions of tri-clamp fitting compatible rupture disks are unique compared to those applied to traditional pipe flange arrangements.

Experts advise that processors consider rupture disks of the “reverse buckling” design. Unlike traditional forward-acting disks, where the load is applied to the concave side of a dome, in a reverse buckling design, the dome is inverted toward the source of the load. Reverse buckling disks are typically sturdier than forward-acting disks, which can be thin and difficult to handle, and as a result have greater longevity, accuracy and reliability over time.

Reverse buckling rupture disks are designed for nonfragmentation upon activation, and are recommended for use with downstream pressure relief valves in order to isolate them from processes, ensuring leak tightness, reduced valve maintenance expenses and often allowing the use of lower-cost valve trim.

Important design features

Other rupture disk design features may be important to various users in industries where bioprocessing is accelerating. For example, disks should provide a fail-safe response to an overpressure condition for both gas and liquid media. In the field of bioprocessing, rupture disks designed for CIP/SIP (clean/ steam in place) service - that provide for minimum “dead space” between process fluid and the disk, and offer a sanitary alert sensor option to announce rupture disk activation - are important to the process designer.

The recommended material for most rupture disks used in bioprocessing applications is stainless steel, although the option of Hastelloy and even Tantalum can be of value for extremely corrosive environments.

In addition to employing the appropriate rupture disk, many users prefer to use an outlet fitting with industry standard tri-

Application NOTE

Rupture disks are non-reclosing pressure relief devices that protect vessels, such as bioreactors, from damaging over-pressurization (or vacuum) conditions.

clamp connections that is keyed to the proprietary rupture disk gasket and ensures installation of the reverse buckling disk onto the bioreactor sanitary inlet ferrule in the right direction. This type of connection and gasket arrangement serves to mistakeproof the direction of the rupture disk installation.

Meeting miniaturization challenges

In some instances, bioreactors and related storage vessels are becoming more miniaturized. To accommodate such cases, some manufacturers now offer a unique, welded ž-inch rupture disk assembly with one-inch tri-clamp connection compatibility.

Miniaturization of rupture disks presents unique challenges that are best met by utilizing reverse buckling technology, according to Geof Brazier, BS&B Safety Systems, an expert in rupture disk devices.

As burst diameters decrease, it becomes challenging to design a reverse buckling disk. To resolve this issue, novel structures have been created that control the reversal of the rupture disk to always activate in a predictable manner.

This includes, for example, a hybrid shape that combines reverse buckling and forward bulging characteristics that are pre-collapsed. In this type of design, a line of weakness is typically placed into the rupture disk structure to define a specific opening flow area when the reverse type disk activates. LB

Ed Sullivan is a Hermosa Beach, CA-based writer. He has researched and written about high technologies, healthcare, finance, and real estate for more than 25 years. For more information, contact BS&B Safety Systems by phone: (918) 622-5950; e-mail: sales@bsbsystems.com; or visit www.bsbsystems.com.

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19

Lab WARE Exhaust Fume Fans Remove Toxic Chemicals

Howden American Fan Company recently announced its line of SMB blowers for Laboratory Exhaust Fume Fans. They are available with capacities up to 4800 cubic feet per minute (CFM), with pressure selections up to 3 inches static pressure water gauge (SPWG). Available in both direct-drive and belt-drive options, they feature a welded steel construction for trouble-free service. Belt-driven options allow for a wide range of performance capabilities; the flexible belt-driven models can be equipped with more energy-efficient smaller motors. The SMB blowers also feature self-aligning and grease-lubricated pillow blocks. www.americanfan.com

Hemostasis Analyzer Combines Five Methodologies in One Platform

Siemens Healthineers announced the launch of the CE-marked Atellica COAG 360 System, a fully automated high-volume coagulation analyzer designed to streamline and unify hemostasis testing. The analyzer is the first to unify five methodologies on one testing platform: clotting (optical and optomechanical), chromogenic, immunologic, high-sensitivity luminescence based immunoassay (LOCI) technology, and platelet aggregation testing. This unification enables laboratories to replace up to three standalone systems with just one analyzer. PSI checks and advanced preanalytics detect underfilled or overfilled samples and accurately identify assay-specific hemolytic, icteric, and lipemic (HIL) interferences using nine pre-defined levels. It also automates determination of prothrombin fragment F1+2 with a fast assay turnaround time of 15 minutes. www.healthcare.siemens.ca

20

November/December 2016 Lab Business

Simplifying Bioburden Testing

Bench Meter Features Intuitive Interface

The Alliance-Ohaus Starter 5000 pH Bench Meter from Alliance Scale has an IP54 ABS plastic housing for protection from water and dust and an in-use cover for extra working protection, along with a moveable standalone electrode holder.

Featuring a 4.3� H backlit LCD colour touch-screen, similar to a smart phone, it permits one-touch toggling of pH and ORP measurement modes and has RS232 and USB ports for GLP/GMP output with a real-time clock. The bench meter includes a 1,000 measurement memory, 10 sensors for calibration storage, eight predefined buffer groups, and three endpoint modes. The measurement range is -2.00 to 20.00 pH; -30 to 130 C; -2000 to +2000 mV with 0.001 pH; 0.01 mV; 0.1 C resolution. It operates on battery or electricity. www.alliancescale.com

MilliporeSigma has expanded its series of EZ-Fit filtration units of disposable filtration devices for bioburden testing.

The new EZ-Fit filtration units come with a wide range of membrane sizes to suit all applications, and a new patented drain design to accelerate processing of turbid and hard-to-filter matrices. A unique funnel shape and hydrophobic material minimizes residue and maximizes sample volume, and a specialized rim design keeps forceps away from filtration area during transfer and forceps from accidentally touching the membrane filtration area. The units are available in 100 mL or 250 mL funnel sizes. www.emdmillipore.com/CA/en

Lab WARE Peristaltic Pump Integrates an Open-Head Sensor Interlock

The Masterflex peristaltic pumps with open-head sensor interlock by ColeParmer add an extra layer of protection for technicians and operators tasked with tubing changes and routine maintenance. When the pump is connected to a programmable logic controller or supervisory control and data acquisition system, similar to lockout or tagout procedures, the extra layer of protection can prevent unexpected remote operation. Open-head sensors can also safeguard inexperienced or infrequent users from injury while loading or changing tubing.

A retrofit system is available for pumps already installed. www.coleparmer.com

Larger Accommodation in Vial Sizes

The Marlow Fluid Technology Group has announced a new and enhanced version of the Flexicon FlexFeed20 (FF20) automatic vial and bottle filling system. The system offers a host of newly developed features designed to offer improved flexibility, faster set-up and greater protection from contamination of open vials/bottles. Users of the latest iteration of the FF20 will find that bottle sizes from 12mm/0.47� to 78mm/3.07� diameter can now be accommodated, delivering even greater process flexibility. The introduction of an intuitive, icon-based HMI makes it easier to use. With the HMI being on the front of the unit, settings can easily be adjusted and the risk of operators contaminating open bottles is prevented. www.wmftg.com

New Zika Monoclonal Antibodies Released

A new set of monoclonal antibodies to the NS1 protein of Zika virus have been released by ViroStat. The symptoms of Zika, the mosquito-borne Flavivirus, are similar to those caused by Dengue virus and Chikungunya virus. These new antibodies do not cross react with the related Flaviviruses tested as well as the Chikungunya virus. They function in IFA and pair in ELISA. www.virostat-inc.com

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21

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September/October 2016

Lean glove boxes deliver process isolation for more reliable, accurate results

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Cannabis Labs look to unlock scientific and commercial potential

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Moments in time

Lending

a Hand I

n 1993, Gloria Thomson was the first recipient of the World Medical Laboratory Development Fund (WMLDF), a fund established by the Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science (CSMLS), the national professional society for Canada’s medical laboratory professionals. The WMLDF was established in 1989 to assist members of the CSMLS with projects to help improve laboratory services in developing countries.

Thomson used her grant of $1,000 to travel to Kenya to teach cytology, the study of plant and animal cells, at the University of Nairobi. Every year since 1989, CSMLS has awarded a selected individual with a grant to help in their research. The WMLDF fund is a financial stepping stone for CSMLS members who are furthering the international goals of the society. It has also made it possible for CSMLS to ship surplus equipment and books from Canada to places of need. LB

www.csmls.org

In 2016, CSMLS honoured Deanna Danskin with a grant from the World Medical Laboratory Development Fund for her commitment to providing support and assistance in the development of international medical laboratory services. She spent a month in Haiti volunteering at the only critical care and trauma hospital in the country.

Photo Credit: S. Doyle/Canadian Journal of Medical Laboratory Science

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23

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