Helping to Speed Up Clinical Studies of Pneumococcal Vaccines

Synbiosis is pleased to announce that its ProtoCOL automated colony counter is being successfully used at prestigious UK research institute, The Institute of Child Health (ICH) to help rapidly assess the effectiveness of novel vaccines against bacterial pneumonia.

Scientists in the Immunobiology Unit at ICH are running clinical trials in which
children are vaccinated with new types of pneumococcal vaccines. Blood samples
from the children are subjected to an in vitro opsonophagocytic-killing assay
(OPKA) and the surviving Streptococcus pneumoniae are plated onto Todd-Hewitt
agar plates with yeast extract and an agar overlay containing antibiotics and a dye,
2, 3, 5-triphenyl tetrazolium chloride. The resulting red bacterial colonies are
counted using a customised ProtoCOL with a high resolution camera, to rapidly
determine the effectiveness of each vaccine.