Latest Lab Talk News in Brief: Million dollar man, acquisitions, R&D, launches, grants

Swanton, credited with providing fundamental knowledge about evolution in tumours, has described how mutations arise and develop. Prize organisers said his discoveries could help explain why some treatments were not effective as well as suggesting means to achieve more accurate diagnostics.

The prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Sjöberg Foundation, which also provides the funding, thanks to a donation from businessman the late Bengt Sjöberg, who died from complications due to cancer in 2017.

Awarded to recipients who have made decisive contributions to cancer research it includes amounts to US$100,000 in personal prize money and US$ 900,000 to fund continued research. The Sjöberg Prize 2025 will be presented to Swanton by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the Academy’s Annual meeting on 31 March, preceded by the prize lecture delivered at Uppsala Comprehensive Cancer Centre (UCCC) the previous day.

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SDI Group plc, focused on companies which design and manufacture specialist lab equipment, industrial & scientific sensors and industrial & scientific products has bought PRP Optoelectronics Ltd for a net consideration of £9.3million.

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Control Union Sri Lanka has opened a new site on the island, Control Union Laboratory, describing it as “a world-class facility within the firm’s global laboratory network”.

Designed to strengthen scientific testing in support of food safety, environmental responsibility, and sustainable trade, the laboratory provides advanced analytical and microbiological testing services. Its capabilities cover food and beverage analysis, water and wastewater testing, environmental and EHS monitoring, pesticide residue and mycotoxin analysis, edible oils and fats, dairy products, spices, fishery products and nutritional profiling.

Equipped with advanced technologies including LC-MS/MS, GC-MS/MS, and PCR-based food product testing capabilities, and aligned with global quality systems, the site is designed to meet stringent international regulatory, export, and certification requirements, says the company.

MD Roshan Ranawake commented: “With the opening of this laboratory, we now offer the complete spectrum of testing, inspection, and certification in Sri Lanka.”

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Experts at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Oxford, the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, and the Childhood Acute Illness and Nutrition (CHAIN) Network have created a new global atlas of more than 4,000 gut bacterial genomes collected from 48 countries, providing a freely accessible microbiome resource that is 15 times larger than previous studies.

Published in Cell, the catalogue described a key infant-gut species, Bifidobacterium infantis (B. infantis), as a ‘missing microbe’ in UK babies and other Western countries in Europe and North America, although common in infants in African and South Asian countries.

Additionally, theresearchers said they has discovered that all commercial infant probiotic strains trace back to three historical bacterial strains no longer found in today’s infant populations, and are highly similar genetically. Bacterial strains found naturally in different regions are better adapted to the infant gut and may be more effective for new probiotics, they stated.

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Liverpool City Region based innovation investment company, LYVA Labs, has become the ninth core partner of the Infection Innovation Consortium: iiCON.

LYVA Labs joins consortium members including Evotec, Infex Therapeutics, LifeArc, Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), Unilever, and the University of Liverpool, within iiCON, which is led by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. LYVA Labs launched in 2021.

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Toyo Ink India Pvt. Ltd, part of Japan’s artience Group, has inaugurated the artience Technology and Innovation Centre – India (aTIC-India) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

The group’s first research centre outside Japan, it aims to be a significant milestone in India’s growing. role in advanced research, manufacturing, and sustainable innovation.

The aTIC-India site will focus on deep, molecular-level research to develop next-generation, sustainable, and high-performance materials, supporting industrial applications across infrastructure, communication, healthcare, energy and advanced electronics.

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Research by Wen-Juan Ma, who leads the Evolutionary Genomics of Sex lab at VUB, Brussels, has received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council for her work on the diversity and evolution of sex chromosomes in the animal and plant kingdom.

Her research will examine why sex chromosomes remain stable in some species while in others they are constantly changing. Whereas in humans the Y chromosome determines the male sex, said Ma, nature appeared “more creative”.

“In birds it works the other way around”, says Ma. “There the W chromosome indicates a female individual. In many other species it is even more complex and sex chromosomes can even be swapped.”

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Electrical products and services supplier CEF has raised more than £1 million for Macmillan Cancer Support since starting in 2020. Since the partnership began, the firm has raised £1,260.252.48.

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PL BioScience GmbH, a German life science company specialising in the production and development of Human Platelet Lysate (HPL), announced that Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) has issued a Material Qualification Certificate for ELAREM Ultimate-FD PLUS (GMP Grade), the company’s processed cell culture media based on human platelets designed to support the efficient and safe in vitro expansion of primary cells and cell lines.

“The PMDA material qualification is an important step for PL BioScience as it allows us to support developers in Japan who are advancing regenerative medicine and other clinical programs that require certainty in raw material quality and safety compliance,” said CEO Dr. Hatim Hemeda.

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A global team of astronomers, co-led by the University of St Andrews, have used a European Space Agency (ESA) telescope to discover a planetary system that turns understanding of planet formation “upside down”, after identifying a distant rocky world.

Within the Solar System, the inner planets, Mercury to Mars, are rocky, while the outer four planets, from Jupiter to Neptune, are gaseous. This pattern appeared to be consistent across the Milky Way galaxy.

However, in a paper published in Science the researchers led by assistant professor Tom Wilson at the University of Warwick found a different pattern with the planets around the red dwarf star LHS 1903.

Inner planets followed the expected pattern of a rocky world orbiting close to the star, followed by two gas giants farther out. But using ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) to study the system in more detail, they discovered an unexpected fourth planet on the outer edge that was rocky rather than gaseous.

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Eppendorf, the global international life science laboratory instruments, consumables, and services developer, manufacturer and distributor has announced a collaboration with Dubai Police.

 Under the agreement, the UAE sheikdom will integrate Eppendorf’s automated laboratory platforms into forensics workflows with the aim of faster crime detection and processing of cases.

Eppendorf will provide the force with automated liquid handling platforms, including the Eppendorf epMotion^® 5075t and 5073t NGS Solutions. In addition, Eppendorf will provide specialised training programmes to ensure implementation and integration with existing instrumentation.

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Software and service provider for assay development Synthace has announced a collaboration with Charles River Laboratories International , the drug discovery, development, testing, and manufacturing solutions provider.

The agreement follows a successful proof-of-concept project in which Charles River used Synthace’s software to effectively and rapidly develop a 1536-well assay and assay transfer, implementing a design of over 700 experimental conditions across multiple laboratories and equipment.

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An international team of researchers from TU Dresden, Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics Halle, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and partner institutions across Europe has developed a new method for producing MXenes –two-dimensional materials – with “unprecedented” purity and control.

The new “gas-liquid-solid” process enables the synthesis of pure MXenes with uniformly distributed halogen atoms on the surface and a precisely tunable surface composition. The collaborators said their method dramatically boosts MXenes’ electrical conductivity and opens the door to high-performance electronics, sensors, and energy technologies.

Discovered in 2011, MXenes are a rapidly growing class of inorganic two-dimensional materials. Each structural unit is composed of layers of transition metals combined with carbon or nitrogen and is terminated by atoms attached to the outermost surfaces.

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Eppendorf and the journal Science are now accepting applications for the 2026 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology.

The annual international research prize worth US$25,000 celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with the prize ceremony held during the week of the Society for Neuroscience conference on November 15, in Washington D.C. at the headquarters of AAAS & Science.

Young scientists aged 35 or under who make outstanding contributions to neurobiological research based on experimental methods of molecular, cellular, systems, or organismic biology are invited to apply by June 15, 2026. Entrants must submit their own application.

The winner and finalists are selected by a committee of independent scientists, chaired by Science’s senior editor Dr. Mattia Maroso.

Since its foundation, the prize has recognised the work of more than 70 scientists.For more information about the Eppendorf & Science Prize click here. 

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Pic (clockwise, top left): Wen-Juan Ma, artience/Toyo, Control Union Sri Lanka, Charles Swanton, LYVA Labs CEO Lorna Green with iiCON founding director professor Janet Hathaway.