Looking back to 2018

Oh dear, too much food and celebrations for the past weeks. Time to throw out the Christmas tree, rip off the seasonal lights, clean the table, and focus our sight firmly forward. However, while waiting to see the sun rise again above the northern snow blanket, it is a good moment to shortly look back to 2018.

The past year was again a time of major developments for Admescope. The year was started by launching a new larger rodent facility, built to be a part of our main R&D site in Oulu. This has greatly supported and facilitated the increased demand for our in vivo PK services, and enabled immediate analysis of the samples after their collection as the facility is just steps away from our bioanalytical labs. Related to the topic, we also continued our e-book series with a chapter focused to in vivo pharmacokinetics, and then yet with a publication in the field of drug permeability and related transporter proteins. The e-books were a real success, number of downloads was high and we are happy with all the great feedback received.

The main headline in our news for the year was however written in June, when we signed acquisition of MetaSafe AB, and this excellent team of ex-AstraZeneca people from Sweden brought their know-how and experience to be a part of Admescope. The acquisition did not only increase our capacity and experience, but also added some top level clinical stage safety metabolism services (e.g. comprehensive MIST evaluation) to our portfolio. The most critical steps of integration have been already performed and processes and workflows aligned, so that now the team works under name Admescope Sweden AB, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Admescope. The team and services in Södertälje will be further developed with several recruitments soon, and we are excited with the possibilities related to opening of the new site and working with all new people.

Yet one major headline was released in November, when we launched our services for biological drugs. The hard and successful R&D work started in 2017 with new team members was ready to release the first set of services, related to structural characterization of proteins & antibodies, their rodent PK studies with LC/MS and ELISA based bioanalytical work, and biomolecular interaction analyses (e.g. antigen-antibody or antibody-FcRn interactions, based on Bio-Layer Interferometry and/or Surface Plasmon Resonance). The R&D work related to biologics is continuing strongly with new targets and ideas, and our plan is to introduce new services at several occasions on the way during 2019.

As always, the year has also had moments of relaxing, laughter and good times together, in several planned and spontaneous team spirit days, the latest of those combining the most bizarre Finnish and Swedish ways of team building with all staff from Oulu and Södertälje, including all ancient ghost stories from our city.

This year will be started immediately with an opening of new larger lab for cell work, yet to be followed by one more analytical lab, with installation of a very interesting new type LC/MS instrumentation. News to be followed – and looking forward to meeting you people on the road over the year!

Written by Ari Tolonen