After a very successful start the European Seminar Series moved on to the UK where a workshop was being offered in Manchester.
The Workshop was opened by an exciting talk from Lonza’s Alan Baines who talked about the evolution of endotoxin testing over his 43 year’s experience in the endotoxin testing market. Ruth Noé spoke about common assay issues, a topic which is always well received during Lonza customer training sessions. LER continued to be a hot topic for discussion on the first day , which was part of the session covering assay interference. David Graham’s (SNBTS) talk about endotoxin testing considerations for ATMPs brought a new perspective to the clinical impact of endotoxin testing. Later that day alternative methods were presented. The Monocyte Activation Test (MAT) introduced by Eelo Gitz from Sanquin (shown on the photo on the left) got a lot of attention as it is quite different from the LAL Assay by detecting Pyrogens in general. The readout for the MAT uses and ELISA to detect the immune response from the monocytes, stimulated by Pyrogens present in the sample. There was also much discussion about the regulatory updates for rFC testing led by Lonza’s Allen Burgensen.
Data Integrity and Automation were the focus of day 2. The customer presentation about Laboratory 2.0 futureproofing (Christine Robson (FujiFilm ) was the opening talk followed by Sinead Cowman explaining how MODA can help with keeping data intact and traceable. The talk by Bernice Fairley of Fujifilm on their approach to showing robustness in their testing routines by OOS/OOT management procedures was met with many nods of agreement around the room. Nisha Gill’s (Oxford BioMedica) talk about business considerations for assay automation certainly sparked some discussion at the open table session including data integrity which closed the meeting.
The participants highly appreciated the opportunity that Lonza has given to discuss current trends in the field of endotoxin testing
