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Analytical instruments make major strides with Nobel

Nandita Vijay, BengaluruThursday, October 16, 2014, 08:00 Hrs  [IST]

When two Americans and a German won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Chemistry ‘for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy’ for smashing the size barrier in optical microscopes, allowing researchers to see individual molecules inside living cells, analytical instruments took the latest strides in its advancements.

For more than a century, researchers have observed very tiny objects using the light — or optical — microscope. But there’s a limit on how small an object such scopes can bring into focus. In 1873, Ernst Abbe calculated that limit, called a diffraction barrier. It was 0.2 micrometer — or half the wavelength of visible light. And that limit held until very recently, when three scientists developed ways to see things far smaller than that. For breaking through that diffraction barrier, they will now share the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Their advance is known as fluorescence microscopy. The key to seeing features on the nano — or billionth-of-a-meter — scale is using molecules that fluoresce, or glow.

In a series of breakthroughs, the scientists overcame what many regarded as a fundamental barrier to improving the resolution of optical microscopes and showed that it was possible to see features at the scale of billionths of a metre. Now there is theoretically no structure too small to be studied.

“Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nano-dimension,” the Nobel jury said. “Today, nanoscopy is used worldwide and new knowledge of the greatest benefit to mankind is produced on a daily basis.”

 Nanascopy, an offshoot of the optical microscope is the latest advancement in the analytical instruments space. The optical microscope, is also known as the light microscope because it uses visible light and a system of lenses to magnify images of small samples. An advanced version of optical microscope was developed into nanoscopy and enabled scientists to visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells.

With nanoscopy , medico scientists can see molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain. They can they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

Analytical instruments are being designed as hand held gadgets making it easy for scores of users in the chemical and biotechnology laboratories in the industrial, research and scientific sectors. The new designs of instruments are small but powerful making operations in laboratory faster, simpler and accurate, according to experts.

Instrumentation majors across the globe are now gearing up to design advanced and handy equipment which are getting popular in markets like India. A growing requirement from genetic research, medicine, pharma, food and environment has made the analytical researchers come out with simple, powerful and hand held versions of instruments which are easy to carry and operate, said the industry. .

There is an increasing demand for faster tests and instant reports in the medical, biotech and pharma sector. Accuracy in analysis is focused towards quality assurance, material testing and nanotechnology. Some of the important analytical instruments are the Raman Spectroscopy applications by Perkin Elmer, Chromotographic Networking by Dionex, GC-MS and LC-MS Technologies by Waters and Ultra Fast Liquid Chromatography by Shimadzu.

The bigwigs in the global analytical instrument space are Waters Corporation, Agilent Technologies, Merck Millipore, Sartorius, Varian, Sigma Aldrich acquired by Merck, Dion EX, YMC Europe, GmbH, Restsch, Eppendorf, Thermo Fischer, Perkin Elmer, Netzsch, Shimadzu, Mettler and Toledo.

India is an interesting market because of increasing contract research and clinical trial projects, besides high level of scientific manpower availability. Despite being a knowledge-driven industry, the analytical instrumentation market is still hardly visible, according to the analytical instrument manufacturers.

Waters has now gone on to expand its range of analytical standards and reagents portfolio. It launched over 200 pre-formulated reference materials and reagents for the scientific laboratory. With these products, scientists are now able to single-source all that they need. It covers right from pre-formulated, small molecule, single-component standards to multi-component test mixes to protein digest and glycan standards.

 The lab major has also developed the Quality Control Reference Materials (QCRM) and Certified Containers. The QC Reference materials are used to routinely benchmark and troubleshoot LC system performance, eliminating the need for scientists to prepare individual standards.

Indian Analytical Industry Association is now concerned about the current tax structure of the Union government which is seen as a serious deterrent for local manufacturing of lab instruments and equipment, pointed out KV Venugopalan, President, Indian Analytical Industry Association & President Waters India.

“With the government continuing to levy a lower customs duty on complete system than the components for manufacturing is a blow to encourage local production. In addition, the buyers have to shell out additional central excise duty and sales tax on locally manufactured goods making it prohibitively expensive compared to imports, he added.

Analytical instrument industry being multi-disciplinary also requires the manpower with technical skills. This is where the government should also look to revising and introducing the related educational inputs that could support the needs of the industry for research and development.

The present market for analytical instrumentation in India is valued at around US$ one billion and the reality is that less than six percent of the requirement is met by domestic manufacturers. Except may be for microscopes and few liquid handling systems most of the manufactured systems are of entry level technology are not suitable for cutting edge research which is the need of the hour. “In fact, the current scenario does not augur well for a India which has made significant strides in many areas including Information technology, space research and nuclear science,” Venugopalan noted.

Analytical instruments development is both technology and capital- intensive. A strong R&D base with multi-disciplinary capability is mandatory to develop modern instrumentation which is ahead of those currently available in the market. Indian industry being small and fragmented does not have the capability to make such investments and is focused efforts and support from Government is mandatory to make any progress in this area. Close collaboration with academia, government R&D establishments and industry is essential for the success of any developmental program, stated the Waters India chief.

In 2013, Merck Millipore India Private Ltd (MMIPL), a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany had entered into a partnership with Toshvin Analytical Pvt. Ltd. to enhance capabilities and provide comprehensive services through their laboratory water purification system to customers in the western and central regions of India.

The growth of the life sciences market and increasing levels of investments from the venture capitalists in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, an increase in the government spending on research and development and other factors are all encouraging suppliers to look at India as a destination to make their presence felt. This has also led to leading players like Shimadzu, VWR International and Agilent Technologies to open customer support and development centres to meet the requirements of the local customers directly, said industry sources.

 
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