Rapid Metabolite Analyser for Medicines Manufacture

“许多现代药物不再是在化学实验室中生产的，而是在大型生物反应器中生产，细胞在那里生产药物（又名生物治疗）。这与酿造啤酒或制作酸奶时发生的情况类似。就像任何生物体一样，不同的细胞株之间存在微妙的差异，其中一些细胞在制造高质量药物方面比其他细胞更有效。因此，选择最佳细胞系用于您正在尝试生产的药物非常重要。此外，在培养细胞时，定期检查细胞是否健康以及是否有适当的营养水平非常重要，以确保以最高的产量生产高质量的药物。监测这些细胞培养物健康状况的一个很好的参数是称为代谢物的多种化学物质。其中包括营养素（维生素、糖、氨基酸、脂肪），还有代谢副产物目前，虽然它们是有希望的治疗方法，但生物治疗剂的制造昂贵，对细胞培养过程中的多种代谢物进行密切和重复的监测可以显着提高生产生物治疗药物的效率和成本，并避免昂贵的尽管代谢物监测具有显著的优势，但目前只有少数几种代谢物被测量，而且在过程中很少测量。这是因为目前的测量仪器购买价格非常昂贵，每次测试都很昂贵，机器难以操作并且给出结果的速度很慢。我们的解决方案是开发一种突破性的代谢物分析仪，克服上述缺点。我们的分析仪将能够快速测量一个样品中的许多不同代谢物。重要的是，它将易于使用，购买和运行成本更低。这将使其可用于药物制造的许多阶段，最终导致更多的患者获得新药。"

"Many modern medicines are no longer produced in chemistry labs, but instead in big bio-reactors where cells produce the medicines (aka biotherapeutics). This is similar to what happens when beer is brewed or yoghurt is made. Like any living organism, different strains of cells vary subtly with some much more effective at making high quality medicines than others. Thus it is important to select the best cell line for the medicine you are trying to produce. In addition, when growing cells it is important to regularly check that they are healthy and have the right levels of nutrients to ensure that a high quality medicine is produced at highest possible yield.An excellent parameter to monitor the health of these cell cultures is a diverse group of chemicals known as metabolites. These include nutrients (vitamins, sugars, amino acids, fats), but also metabolic by-products (like lactate) or toxins.Currently, whilst they are promising treatments, biotherapeutics are expensive to manufacture, thus are a big drain on a country's medicines budget.The close and repeated monitoring of multiple metabolites in cell culture processes could significantly improve the efficiency and cost of manufacturing biotherapeutics and avoid costly culture failures, enabling better medicines to be produced more cheaply, ultimately benefitting patients.Despite the noted advantages of metabolite monitoring, only a few are measured at present and at infrequent points in the process. This is because current measurement instruments are very expensive to purchase, each test is expensive, the machines are difficult to operate and slow in giving results.Our solution is to develop a breakthrough metabolite analyser that overcomes the above drawbacks. Our analyser will be able to quickly measure many different metabolites in one sample. Importantly it will be easy to use and much cheaper to purchase and run. This will make it usable at many stages of medicines manufacture, ultimately leading to new medicines reaching more patients."