New Integrated Custom Automation (ICA) Business at SBS 2006

SBS 2006 saw the launch of the new Integrated Custom Automation (ICA) business from TTP LabTech. Based on TTP LabTech's heritage of established drug discovery products and comprehensive experience in custom automation systems, ICA aims to provide practical and innovative integrated automation across the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

Commercial Director Jas Sanghera says it is a logical move, formalising an already highly profitable business area for TTP LabTech and addressing a key customer concern: "When it comes to automation, integration is the buzzword throughout the industry. We feel that with ICA we are perfectly placed to provide the solution. TTP LabTech has been creating and delivering novel automation solutions for the pharmaceutical industry for over 15 years and it was this background that allowed us to develop the successful products for which we are widely known."

Since its inception in 1989, TTP LabTech has built up and retained an unrivalled broad spectrum of expertise that covers electrical and mechanical engineering, software, control systems, physical and organic chemistry, biochemistry and cell biology, materials science, optical engineering and physics. Sanghera continues "Our customers have generally been working in cutting edge fields and so came to us to provide the intellectual and technical solutions that they required. Increasingly we also found ourselves being asked to advise on the wider aspects and implications of integration which gave us the impetus to create ICA."

Sanghera goes on to list some of the automation firsts that provide the basis for the new ICA business:

? Automated chemistry systems
In 1998, TTP LabTech developed a high-throughput synthesis workstation for a consortium of 9 leading pharmaceutical companies. Today, it is completing a number of automation systems in which individual vessels move between stations for reagent addition, heating/cooling/stirring, evaporating and analysing the contents. This novel approach provides complete process flexibility and allows large numbers of experiments to be queued up to run unattended, unlike most ?automated chemistry' systems.

? Bio-pharmaceutical production and manufacture
Instrumentation developed and supplied by TTP LabTech may be bench-top or factory scale - one such automated roller bottle incubation system covers an area of 5 tennis courts, contains over 500,000 parts, and has run reliably for over 5 years.

? Fluorescence detection instrumentation
TTP LabTech developed Chemunex's ChemScan RDI, a product capable of finding a single living bacteria in a cup full of liquid within minutes. Before ChemScan, detection times ranged from 2-14 days, depending on the application. It won a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1999.

TTP LabTech is targeting both existing and new clients on a global basis for the ICA business. "SBS provides the ideal launch platform since we are particularly strong in the HTS sector" concluded Sanghera.