Screening Studies in Laboratory

A facility incorporating continuous-flow and microreactor technology, Factory of Tomorrow, is being constructed at Lonza s main site in Visp, Switzerland. 

The plant offers expedited development and technology transfer compared with standard batch-based production. The plant feautures Lonza s FlowPlate microreactors enabling faster changeover of processes and efficiencies in production and cleaning and is planed to operate from mid 2012 [8]. 

A Canadian firm, SBI Fine Chemicals, is out to prove that continuous microreactor techniques can also be used on a larger scale. For that purpose, SBI is building a biodiesel demonstration plant in Edmonton, Alberta, that can make 201 of the fuel per minute from a variety of vegetable oils [9]. 

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For traditional PK studies in laboratory animals, one would dose three animals via an intravenous (IV) route and three animals via oral (PO) dosing, with a minimum of 8 time points per animal, resulting in a total of 48 samples for a PK study of one compound. For a comparison of six NCEs, using this standard PK procedure would result in the need to assay 288 samples. A large pharmaceutical company may have to assay 40 to 60 or more NCEs weekly via in vivo PK screening. This led to methods for reducing the number of samples that need to be assayed. 

Borriston Labs. 1985. Four-week oral nephrotoxicity screening study in male F344 rats. Submitted to American Petroleum Institute, Washington, DC by Borriston Laboratories, Inc., Temple Hills, MD. Doc FYI-AX-0385-0280 SU. 

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