The biotech product development company is “truly building a chromatography powerhouse,” and it’s not afraid to show it, according to the company’s President in Chromatography & Analytical Technologies Division Jakob Gudbrand, who spoke at Thermo Fisher Scientific’s press conference on the first day of Pittcon 2016 in Atlanta.
Among the close to a dozen new products the company launched at this year’s lab science conference, Thermo Fisher Scientific emphasized its crown jewel—the Dionex Integrion High-Performance Ion Chromatography (HPIC), which made its debut at the conference, but officially launched in early February.
“With Integrion, we are re-defining the use of routine ion chromatography in environmental, food and pharmaceutical laboratories,” Gudbrand told R&D Magazine post-conference. “The Dionex Integrion HPIC brings the technologies and benefits of high-end IC to these laboratories—giving them the power of outstanding accuracy, sensitivity and precision.”
This new system is said to be intuitive, easy to use and able to address more involved laboratory workflows.
The innovations include:
- Better performance and speed for high-pressure ion chromatography applications
- Consumables Device Monitor, which provides RFID tags in all consumables, saving time and expense of manual consumables tracking. The system automatically identifies them and its built-in intelligence prevents installation errors, in addition to allowing users to monitor consumables performance over time.
- Wireless tablet with local language support that allows the flexibility to access IC controls even while away from the instrument
- Reagent-Free and Automatic Eluent Generation to deliver better reproducibility and eliminate manual eluent preparation
“Integrion is a significant expansion to our industry-leading ion chromatography portfolio, enabling our customers to make the world a cleaner place,” Gudbrand said during the press conference.
So what’s next for the multinational company?
In a post-conference interview with R&D, the company president said one of the biggest trends he’s seeing now in biotech product development is analytical technology.
“Our biopharma customers are facing a growing set of challengers in the discovery and development of new drugs to treat diseases,” he added. “The new biologics include therapeutic proteins, fusion proteins, monoclonal antibodies and antibody drug conjugates—all of which are complex molecules that are significantly larger than conventional small-molecule drugs.”
Identifying these complex biomolecules warrants new analytical technologies and workflow solutions that offer advanced levels of performance in specificity and sensitivity, while still being simple to use, according to Gudbrand.
“To address these challenges, we are working closely with our biopharma customers … to develop more comprehensive and user-friendly instruments and consumables that enable scientists to develop safe and effective drugs faster,” he concluded.
At Pittcon, the company also showcased its Built for Biopharma solution-based analytical workflow that enables its customers to gather more information about novel therapeutics earlier in the development process.
R&D 100 AWARD ENTRIES NOW OPEN:
Establish your company as a technology leader! For more than 50 years, the R&D 100 Awards have showcased new products of technological significance. You can join this exclusive community! Learn more.