CMA Microdialysis Newsletter June, 2010

Dear friends of CMA,

The Swedish Crown Princess Victoria just married commoner Daniel Westling, her former personal trainer now titled Prince Daniel. Millions of TV-viewers watched the spectacular wedding live and never has so much tears of joy flooded down on the viewers blushing cheeks. I watched the happening together with a group of friends including a retired navy General who clearly expressed his alternative republican mindset. Despite this, I did sense tears from him as well and a noticed how this event united all kinds of Swedes and generally strengthened the monarchy. National unification led by a monarchy dating back to the 1st century!

Even though I am a royalist by heart running CMA with a long history, one has to be careful in comparing us with a monarchy. As the pioneer and market leader, we are the uniting force within the Microdialysis community. With this comes lots of obligations, just as it does for the monarchy. One of these important task is to be the driving force towards raising the standards in our industry.

In the recently updated 2010 “The Guide” (1) (the primary reference bible ensuring that researchers conduct research with highest scientific, humane, and ethical principles), there is an important new chapter on animal biosecurity practices. Animal biosecurity refers to all measures taken to contain, prevent, and eradicate infections that may cause disease or otherwise make laboratory animals unsuitable for research.  An important part of this chapter contains directives on sterilization. In basic research, specific sterilization methods should be selected on the basis of physical characteristics of materials to be sterilized. Sterilization indicators should be used to validate that materials have been properly sterilized.

CMA’s response to these directives has been to offer Beta-irradiated consumables for use in animal research. The products are sent though the same process as CMA’s clinical catheters that are approved for monitoring the human brain, heart, liver etc. As a leading medical device manufacturer of Class III products produced under ISO 13485 and QSR standards, CMA is able to deliver preclinical products under the same quality umbrella. I am proud to announce that we are expanding our offering in this important sector with new products again, please read more in the newsletter. 

When the newlywed Crown princess addressed a sunny Stockholm with over 250.000 spectators, she said “Dear friends, thanks for giving me my prince.”

Now I’m looking forward to hearing top executives in the pharma industry addressing researchers across the globe “Dear friends of CMA, thanks for raising the research standards! More accurate research output accelerates drug development leading to a healthier world.”

Wishing you all a wonderful summer season!

Best regards,
Philip Siberg

(1) The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals http://dels.nas.edu/ilar

Uppsala Berzelii Technology Centre for Neurodiagnostics is a centre of excellence with the overall goal to enable early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer’s disease and chronic pain, by identifying and validating relevant biomarkers.
CMA has entered into the collaborative project together with several industrial partners to bring in valuable resources and knowledge, and eventually develop new products based on the findings from the Centre.

The mission is to identify and validate diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in the field of neurorelated diseases, by bringing together key players from care givers, academia and biotechnology industry. This will be accomplished by a unique platform for translational research uniting patient care, basic and clinical research, and health care industry expertise.

What makes this Centre unique in an international perspective is the close connection and proximity between on one hand clinical research groups with access to large sets of biomaterial (public sector) and on the other technology-driven research groups (academia) tailoring new assays for the clinicians.

A first and important new article has been published reporting improvements when running microdialysis sampling of proteins in complex biological matrixes.

 microdialysis of proteins.pdf

For more info on the Berzelii Center, see their website here. 

Accidents are the leading cause of death in children younger than 15 years of age, with head injury being the commonest cause of an adverse outcome in this group.

Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland, US, is routinely running Cerebral microdialysis, with a history of almost 200 monitored adult patients. In a recent abstract, they presented the first pioneering data on the use of Cerebral Microdialysis in pediatric patients.  Jeff Chen, Sandy Cecil (responsible for the bedside monitoring of microdialysis in neurointensive care patients) and colleagues report findings from six pediatric patients with severe TBI. The authors conclude that Cerebral microdialysis may be implemented safely and effectively in pediatric head trauma patients and can provide additional information to guide therapy to optimize neurologic outcome.

For more info on the abstract presented at the National Neurotrauma Symposium in Las Vegas, June 2010, see the database here 

Following the successful launch of the β-irradiated CMA 7 probes and guides, CMA is now proud to also offer β-irradiated CMA 11 probes and guides.

Read more

During July and August we have limited resources in the office and we therefore recommend that you call the switchboard +46 8 470 10 00 or send an email to cma@microdialysis.se when you need support.  We have always personnel available to respond to your requests even though your usual contact person might be on vacation.

You can always send in your order or question by email cma@microdialysis.se or
fax +46 8 470 10 50.