Latest Industry Insights

Public health groups and leaders around the world are adopting different approaches for viral tracking and monitoring to halt the spread of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The full impact that microplastics have on health and the environment is still not well understood, however, mounting evidence regarding their negative effects has made microplastics a topic of interest for scientists, governments and regulatory bodies. We spoke to Kathleen A. Young about microplastics detection techniques and technologies, the importance of standards and how regulations may come to fruition in the years to come.

A novel combination of miniaturized purification technology, automation and software presents an opportunity to drastically shorten drug or vaccine development timelines by rethinking how purification processes are refined.

To detect, quantify and ultimately instigate remedial action in relation to dioxin contamination, scientists require suitable analytical tools and techniques. The USEPA recently approved a new dioxin testing method which could assist these efforts. We spoke to Frank L. Dorman, PhD, FRSC, about the hazards posed by dioxins, challenges in their identification and the future detection landscape.

Microplastics are now ubiquitous in our lives and environment. To compound the problem, the advent of COVID-19 has seen uptake of single-use plastics in the form of personal protective equipment (PPE) skyrocket. We spoke to Kathleen A. Young about how the microplastics issue has evolved in light of COVID-19, particularly around PPE waste and what gains are being made in the areas of testing and analysis standards.

We spoke to ACD/Labs, which specializes in informatics platforms for analytical data handling. Andrew Anderson, ACD/Labs’ vice president for innovation and informatics strategy, outlined the challenges analytical chemists have faced during the pandemic and how informatics tools can help to make digital strategies, both remote and in the lab, more streamlined.

The development and implementation of efficient tests is crucial in efforts to reduce the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Western blotting has been a core technique in molecular biology for many years, however, optimization and reproducibility can be problematic. We spoke to Dr Alexandre Lucas about the automation of western blotting and the difference this advance is making to research.

Liquid chromatography has proven to be an invaluable tool in analytical labs. However, despite being a “mature” technique, there are still some areas that prove problematic, leading to suboptimal results. One such area is the loss of analytes during the chromatographic process, but design innovations are aiming to overcome this problem.

Technology Networks spoke with Dr Jan Hellemans, CTO and co-founder of CRO Biogazelle, as well as co-author of the MIQE guidelines, to learn why PCR-based technologies are the "workhorse" technologies for the company.