Party to celebrate the installation of the UK's 100th immunoassay system, at Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust
Jugglers, fire-eaters and a belly dancer, accompanied by a West Indian steel band, provided colourful entertainment for party guests celebrating the placement of Bayer Healthcare Diagnostics Division's 100th Advia Centaur immunoassay system in the Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust on 24 July.
The party, held at the Social Club of the University Hospital of Wales, was hosted by Bayer in recognition of the University's long-standing partnership with the company.
This began in the early 1980s when researchers in the College of Medicine at Cardiff first developed the revolutionary chemiluminescence technology which is now utilised in Bayer's immunoassay analysers, and has culminated in the hospital's recent acquisition of the 100th Advia Centaur to be sold by Bayer in the UK.
Over 100 guests from throughout the hospital trust attended the party, whose circus theme reflected the Advia Centaur's ability to help laboratories succeed in 'juggling' their ever-increasing workload commitments - an analogy which illustrates how the high productivity of this automated system enables hard-pressed laboratory staff to 'keep all the balls in the air'.
To emphasise this point, several members of the Technology Research Centre and Laboratory Medicine Directorate teams were persuaded to try their hands at juggling, and were caught on camera demonstrating their new-found skills.
The party was opened by Ian Parkinson, director of European support for Bayer Diagnostics, who spoke about the acridinium ester immunoassay labelling technique which was originally developed in Cardiff and is now an integral part of the chemiluminescence technology that underpins the success of the Advia Centaur.
Chemiluminescence is a phenomenon whereby a chemical reaction in a sample being analysed leads to the emission of light.
"It's quite incredible to think that the starting point of acridinium ester was just a small flash of light and how it's grown into the sale of 100 Advia Centaur systems in the UK, 1000 in Europe and over 3000 worldwide", he said.
Rhys John, consultant clinical biochemist at Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, went on to say that chemiluminescence has become established as one of the most successful scientific techniques currently used in endocrine laboratory testing.
Referring to his colleagues' ongoing collaboration with Bayer Diagnostics, he said that the partnership has been successful over the years in several ways.
"Firstly, it has benefited the University of Wales College of Medicine which originally had the foresight to take out patents on the acridinium ester chemiluminescence technique.
"Secondly, acquisition of Advia Centaur immunoassay systems (of which there are now two in the hospital's biochemistry department) has enabled our laboratory to provide a very large-scale endocrine testing service to GPs and hospital clinicians, in addition to an endocrine screening service for the whole of Wales.
Thirdly, use of the analysers has allowed us to develop and evaluate new methods of immunoassay testing in the laboratory.
