A ?vital? Addition for Healthy Living Product Development

One year on from its installation at Unilever's Corporate Research Labs at Colworth Park, the Horiba ABX Pentra 400 clinical chemistry analyser is proving a highly useful resource to many scientists based at this major facility. Core to the philosophy of these researchers is ?Vitality' as they investigate new hotspots in science to scope out future products which will impact on human health and well being. The ABX Pentra 400 is consequently contributing to the development of new food and home and personal care products which aim to meet the everyday needs of people worldwide.

Mr Duncan Talbot, Specialist and Biomarker Assay Technologist, explained the key types of research for which the ABX Pentra 400 is used. "Over 100 scientists based at the facility are involved in research that focuses on human health. Many are studying human metabolism, so they require highly accurate measurements of blood metabolites and biomarkers such as HbA1c, APOA1 and CRP. Such measurements enable the assessment of intervention studies.

As the ABX Pentra 400 is being used by a variety of research groups across the site, its flexibility and user friendliness were key reasons for its selection by Unilever. "The ABX Pentra 400 has the capacity to undertake many different assays. As it is also an open system we are able to augment the range of assays possible and readily change parameters and protocols to modify assays of our own and further enhance our research potential," said Duncan. "The touch-screen set up on the analyser is very straightforward, and there is also on screen help. This is ideal for our environment where there's always someone new needing to use the ABX Pentra 400, so it has to be intuitive and easy to use."

In addition, the ability to validate and reproduce results for comparative studies was also of great importance to the researchers. "We believe that all our studies should meet the highest scientific standards. The ABX Pentra 400 actually enables us to follow GLP, as it marks all reagents and logs batches," said Duncan.