Bio/Pharmaceutical NEWS - Fall 2011

Looking back to look forward

by J. Wilson Hershey, Ph.D., Lancaster Laboratories chairman of the board

As another successful year at Lancaster Laboratories comes to a close, we look back to look forward. Every day we listen to clients’ project challenges and ideas, learn from the past and continually look to implement new system improvements and service delivery models, making yesterday’s suggestions tomorrow’s success stories. Many of our services have come from hearing clients’ thoughts and adapting to deliver more customized service experiences. My goal at the end of every year is to look back on all the clients we’ve delighted and ensure that satisfaction continues to grow for next year.

As we look forward to serving everyone even better next year, allow me to share a few of our ever-evolving service enhancements that are highlighted in this issue.

Flexibility has been a continuous theme in our 51-year history and the catalyst for modeling and expanding our services to address customers’ unique project requirements and market- driven changing needs. To that, we currently offer five service models, and many of our largest bio/pharmaceutical clients are using more than one of these. Our customers are choosing several models and benefiting from the flexibility to design their own outsourcing program. Traditional Fee for Service, Managed Hours, Full Time Equivalent (FTE), Professional Scientific Staffing (PSS) and Asset/Operation Ownership compose one-stop-shopping at its best. Another exciting way we advance capabilities is continuously expanding our technical knowledge and instrumentation:

• Our new TOF instruments are utilized by our scientists for protein characterization, extractable/leachable studies and for impurity investigations requiring accurate mass determination. The TOFs, interfaced with UHPLCs, will increase resolution in complicated chromatograms and potentially reduce TAT. New software will allow us to acquire, process and report complex LC/ MS data more efficiently.
• Also newly acquired is our Nicolet FTIR, supporting routine testing for Pharmaceutical Identification and Assay by IR. It will be used in parallel with the current Biorad FTIR for analyses specific to the mid-IR range. The Nicolet FTIR expands capabilities for Pharmaceutical Identification into the near-IR and far-IR ranges. The spectrophotometer employs a Photoacoustic Detector for Identification of Resins and an Integrating Sphere Attachment for use in Light Transmission of Containers.
• Our new imaged Capillary Electrophoresis (iCE) for Isoelectric Focusing (IEF) represents our commitment to listening to clients and offering services that directly address their individual project requests. While we’ve used CE instrumentation for years, iCE offers higher sample throughput and shortened run times, and clients using iCE at their in-house labs can now compare their characterization data with ours.

Finally, during every past acquisition, our values have remained constant, and we’ve been able to maintain our brand. Now as we continue our integration with Eurofins, they too see value in the Lancaster Laboratories brand. Yet one of the distinguishing factors Eurofins has from our previous owners is Eurofins is in the laboratory business and also has strong brand awareness in Europe. So we therefore have two outstanding companies, providing a greater geographic scope. Consequently, the best way to capitalize on this brand recognition is to combine our logos. Even though our legal name will remain Lancaster Laboratories, beginning early next year, our new combined logo will have both the Eurofins and Lancaster Labs names.

Most of all, we look forward to working with you this coming year and discovering all the new ways we’ll become smarter and more proficient in serving you better each day.