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Exhibiting at ImVacs Immunotherapeutics & Vaccine Summit, Providence, RI, 17-19 Aug. Phil Ball & Anita Bate will be attending, if you would like to set up a meeting contact us.
Exhibiting at The BioProcessing Summit, Boston, 24-27 Aug. Roger Lias & Phil Ball will be attending, if you would like to set up a meeting contact us.
BioPharm America™ 2009, San Francisco, 16-18 Sep. Michael Faughnan will be attending.
Beyond Antibodies & Protein Engineering and Design, San Diego, 21-24 Sep. Michael Faughnan will be attending.
EuroBiO 2009, Lille 23-25 Sep. Richard Dennett will be chairing the panel on “Establishing win-win models with your service suppliers: outsourcing deals”. If you would like to set up a meeting contact us.
Associate Sponsors of World Vaccine Congress Lyon 2009, Lyon, 5-8 Oct. Phil Ball will present on “End-to-end process development and scalable manufacture” on 7 Oct at 14.40pm. If you would like to set up a meeting contact us.
For a full list of events we will be attending please visit the events page of our website.
As summer holidays are upon us, and in my perpetual pursuit of audience relevance, I thought that I would review a vacation destination. Also, I’m low on options – since I moved to an operational role, my trotters aren’t beating a path around the globe as much as they used to, and lavish business lunches have been sadly curtailed. These days an ‘out of office’ meeting is a stroll down to the utilities block to speak to an engineer!
Anyway, my resolve recently cracked and I gave into my youngest’s plaintive cries to visit the child paradise and home of snap fitting, brightly coloured, bedroom floor litter that is Legoland, Windsor. It was an opportunity to use up what remained of my Priority Club points and get a free room in the Crowne Plaza, Marlow and make it into a short holiday break (a day in a theme park with my children can only be seriously contemplated on the back of a very good nights sleep and a decadently lavish breakfast).
Although the drive up to the hotel seemed to wind through a rather uninspiring sprawl of commercial units and car body shops, the setting of the hotel turned out to be pretty spectacular. The food was good, the service friendly and rather bizarrely we were even presented with a free bowl of soup when we arrived. You could say we were ‘bowled’ over! (sorry...). The stay was only marred by the pitifully weak security settings on the pay per view TV. I swear the kids were never left alone in the room but somehow I was presented with a bill for £15 on checkout. Strong and heated words were exchanged with my children and pocket money was duly docked – so we all began the big day out in fine moods...
Legoland itself was an expensive horror of queues and fast food – punctuated by the shrill cries of happy, and penetrating shrieks of unhappy, children. To be fair, it was an attractively set out theme park and some care and imagination had gone into the (unsurprisingly Lego themed) design and decoration. However, in my humble opinion, there were far too many people allowed in through the gates. In the first 30 minutes we managed to get on 3 rides. In the following 6 hours we managed to get on... 3 rides. It wouldn’t be so bad if the rides were worth waiting for but we are very definitely talking about a young child destination. The roller coasters etc aren’t going to excite many people over the age of 11. After over two hours in the queue for ‘Laser Riders’ trying to placate a wilfully energetic 7 year old, it was almost a welcome relief to spend half an hour in the obligatory Lego superstore and contemplate parting with another small fortune. At least it bought a peaceful drive home. Or would have, if the car hadn’t have broken down en route, thereby blocking the exit ramp of a multi story car park in Slough at 6.00 pm. But that’s another story...
Derek Ellison
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Welcome to the Summer edition of our e–newsletter. As we enter into the summer holiday period there is a ‘vacational’ theme to this edition – check out Derek’s review of one of the UK’s most popular holiday destinations. However, there is no seasonal slow down here at Eden, we have a lot of major new developments to announce in the ‘What’s going on’ section.
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter and we welcome any feedback.
Despite the global economic situation we are pleased to be able report continued market recognition of Eden Biodesign’s expertise and well positioned service offering. Our demonstrated expertise across multiple biologics manufacturing platforms; state-of-the-art inspected manufacturing facilities for mammalian, microbial and viral cGMP production and the depth of our service offering and drug development knowledge mean that we are continuing to attract significant interest from clients across the globe. By way of examples, we have recently signed contracts with a Japanese company for production of a viral vaccine product and two European companies for clinical production of recombinant protein drugs derived from mammalian and microbial expression systems. Manchester airport (which is just a short drive from our facilities) is picking-up more passenger traffic as we host visits from a wide range of North American customers from entrepreneurial biotechnology companies to world-leading major pharmaceutical corporations.
We also continue to strengthen our alliances and to grow the “toolbox” of technologies available to our clients. We recently announced the continuation of our relationship with Selexis SA (Geneva, Switzerland) whereby Eden Biodesign’s clients can access their SURE Cell Line DevelopmentSM Platform. We are also pleased to now be able to offer full molecular biology and cell-line development services using Millipore’s (Bedford, MA) UCOE® mammalian expression technology to interested clients. Both expression technologies engage seamlessly with Eden’s platform development strategies allowing clients to realize their products full potential within realistic timelines.
Staffing levels have now reached 80 with ongoing recruitment as we take on further projects – please check the vacancies page on our website for up-to-date positions available.
Dr. Phil Ball recently relocated to our Group’s US subsidiary, Eden Biodesign, Inc. in Research Triangle Park, NC, as Technical Director to join Roger Lias and Maria Lusk, Director of Project Management who joined the company at the start of the year.
In other news, back in March, the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) audited our cGMP manufacturing facility for the second time. We were delighted to report that the inspection was an outstanding success, with no critical or major deficiencies found by the inspector. To read more click here.
In May, we attended and exhibited at the 2009 BIO International Convention, in Atlanta, GA. The event drew more than 14,300 industry representatives and although numbers were slightly down from previous years it was a good show for the team. There were 1,900 exhibitors in 176,000 net square feet in the exhibit hall this year.
Prior to taking the trip to BIO in Atlanta, the Business Development team got together with family members on Saturday evening to watch an AAA Baseball game – Durham Bulls vs. Rochester Red Wings. For those of us from the UK, it was our first experience of the game and it was thoroughly enjoyable event.
And finally congratulations to the following Eden staff who ran at the Active Knowsley Challenge 5K on 17 May to raise money for Claire House Children’s Hospice in Liverpool: Jenny Thirlway, Andrew Wallace, Alison Justice, Liam Patton, Claire Atkinson, Simon Routledge, James Brown, Vicky Bennett, Gerard Powell, Kate Westwell, Anita Bate, Ray Norris, Andy Evans, Dave Simpson, and Karolin Lindström. If any of our readers wish to donate to this very worthy cause please visit the website.
Not to be outdone, the staff from our US office have signed-up for a half marathon on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in November. Watch this space to see how they fare!!!
View our latest webcast – Dr. Phil Ball discusses ‘Novel HPLC Method to Accelerate The Development of Adenoviral Vaccines’ from June 25 2009.
Why not read the latest articles to be published?
‘Vaccine Evolution’ written by Phil Ball and Maria Lusk, as featured in European Biopharmaceutical Review, July 2009. Click here to review.
‘Outsourced Vaccine Development’ written by Phil Ball and Maria Lusk, featured in Pharmaceutical Technology’s on-line supplement, July 2009. An edited version of the article can be viewed here.
‘21st Century Vaccine Manufacturing – Examining the Potential of Rapid Analytical Methodologies and Worldwide Supply Chains’ written by Crawford Brown, Phil Ball and Karolin Lindström, as featured in BioProcess International’s April 2009 issue. Click here to review.
This newsletter is prepared by Eden Biodesign and comments and suggestions are most welcome.
Please address them to: Johanne Tabern (Tel: +44 (0)151 728 1750)
Eden Biodesign
National Biomanufacturing Centre, Estuary Banks
Estuary Commerce Park, Speke Road, Liverpool L24 8RB
www.edenbiodesign.com
If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, please email Johanne to be removed from the mailing list.
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