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January 2024
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!


May 2023
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 21st anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 


March 2023
Chiralabs enhances its spectroscopic facility
Chiralabs enhances its spectroscopic capabilities with a UV-Vis-NIR Cary 5000 instrument to cover increasing demand in higher resolution spectroscopic analysis. The Agilent Cary 5000 complements our existing Cary 500 which has successfully provided high quality data for demanding areas.


Chiralabs Agilent Cary 5000

January 2023
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!


November 2022
Chiralabs develops bespoke Total Nitrogen assay


August 2022
Chiralabs enhances its spectroscopic facility
Chiralabs enhances its spectroscopic capabilities with new additional instrumentation to cover increasing demand in photometric and colorimetric assays.


May 2022
Happy 20th Birthday!
Chiralabs would like to thank all clients, collaborators and colleagues, past and present, for these wonderful first 20 years and is looking forward to the future.

Chiralabs celebrates 20th Birthday


January 2022
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

November 2021
Major reference work commissioned
The scientific publisher Elsevier has just commissioned the second edition of the major work  "Comprehensive Chirality" which will be available in nine hardback volumes or online via ScienceDirect.  Dr George Tranter from Chiralabs is co-editor of the volume focusing on separations and analysis of chiral compounds. This major reference work is aimed at professionals dealing with chiral materials in industry and academia. 

May 2021
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 19th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

January 2021
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

November 2020
Chiralabs enhances its spectroscopic facility
Chiralabs enhances its Infrared spectroscopic capabilities with new additional instrumentation to cover increasing demand in films, surface and residue analysis.

Sept 2020
Chiralabs enhances its SMART testing services in collaboration with National Conservation Service
Chiralabs and National Conservation Service have joined forces to improve on the common Oddy testing methodology available for assessing the risk to heritage items from products and materials used in buildings, display, conservation and storage. The  new test, named SMART (Spectro-Microscopic Analysis of Relative Tarnishing), helps heritage institutions and suppliers to decide whether the use of materials might affect heritage objects or collections over time. 

May 2020
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 18th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

July 2020
Chiralabs helps in the formulation of hand sanitisers
Chiralabs helps manufacturers of hand sanitisers in the characterisation and improved formulation of their products . 

February 2020
Chiralabs enhances its RNA Circular Dichroism spectroscopic services
Chiralabs enhances its RNA Circular Dichroism spectroscopic services to provide further characterisation of folding, interactions and behaviour of RNA-based biopharmaceuticals.

January 2020
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

December 2019
Chiralabs extends its spectroscopic facility
Chiralabs extends its Raman spectroscopic capabilities to provide analysis using a NIR 785nm laser.

June 2019
Chiralabs extends its thermal analysis services
Chiralabs extends its existing thermal analysis capabilities (DSC, TGA, etc.). 

May 2019
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 17th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

January 2019
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

November 2018
Chiralabs helps the commemoration 'Beyond the Deepening Shadow'
Chiralabs has helped with the chemical analysis for the WWI commemoration event at the Tower of London. This event was designed by Tom Piper and Mira Calix and organised by the Historic Royal Palaces in partnership with Pyro Studio Ltd. This event saw the moat of the Tower being lit each night for one week with thousands of individual flames.

June 2018
Chiralabs helps in raising awareness of the potential carcinogen danger of artificial grass pitches
At the request of the Telegraph, Chiralabs has analysed ‘rubber’ crumbs from artificial grass pitches and detected the presence of highly carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds such as Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP). The level of BaP was found to comply with the current  EU regulation limit for rubber crumb under its current classification as a ‘mixture’ but would not have done had it been deemed an article instead of a mixture.
Chiralabs has raised strong concerns regarding the current classification, which allows crumbs to contain 100-fold more BaP than either tyres (from which the ‘rubber’ crumbs are supposedly manufactured) or other sporting equipment, especially when considering the potential for direct ingestion and/or inhalation of the crumbs and associated dust by players on artificial pitches. There is concern of incidences of cancer in sports players globally which may be related to the use of artificial pitches. For more information please read the article published in the Telegraph at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/11/sport-chiefs-fail-warn-players-3g-pitch-cancer-risk/

May 2018
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 16th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

March 2018
George Tranter from Chiralabs  is invited speaker at the AT Europe 2018 Symposium on Latest developments in Analytical Technologies in the Biopharmaceutical Industry
The AT Europe 2018 Symposium was held on the 6th-9th of March in Barcelona (Spain) and focussed on practical applications of analytical technologies for the  biopharmaceutical industry, at which George Tranter, the CEO of Chiralabs, was an invited speaker.  His talk was on "Synergies between Spectroscopies: The SuperSpectra Approach for Biopharmaceutical Characterisation" and covered the concepts of SuperSpectra and an overview of its use such as fingerprinting biopharmaceuticals, early identification of production problems, prediction of product characteristics and impurity profiles.

January 2018
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

October 2017
A scientific paper written by Chiralabs in the memory of Dr Howard Flack  is published in the journal Tetrahedron: Asymmetry (Elsevier)
The paper entitled "Chiroptical spectroscopies and the validation of crystal structure stereochemical assignments" describes the use of chiroptical spectroscopies in stereochemical assignment and the use of circular dichroism to verify that single crystals selected for X-ray crystallographic analysis are representative of the bulk material.
Printed version of the full article in : Tetrahedron: Asymmetry(2017), 28(10),1192-1198.  

May 2017
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 15th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

March 2017
Chiralabs extends its chromatography facility
Chiralabs extends its chromatography capabilities to provide sugars analysis for the food and drink industries.

January 2017
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

October 2016
Major reference work published
The scientific publisher Elsevier has just released the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Spectroscopy and Spectrometry, of which Dr George Tranter from Chiralabs is a co-editor. This major reference work, aimed at professional spectroscopists in industry and academia, is available in four hardback volumes or online via ScienceDirect.  

September 2016
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Begbroke Science Park laboratories. 

June 2016
Chiralabs extends its physical analysis services
Chiralabs extends its extensive physical chemistry capabilities by offering hardness testing services. 

March 2016
George Tranter from Chiralabs  is invited speaker at the Biopharmaceutical Analytical Group Symposium on Latest developments in bioanalytical characterisation relating to emerging technologies
The Biopharmaceutical Analytical Group Symposium was held on the 15h-16th of March at CPI Darlington (UK) and focussed on analytical challenges for the next generation of biopharmaceutical products, at which George Tranter, the CEO of Chiralabs, was an invited speaker.  His talk was on "Circular Dichroism revisited: Improved structural analysis & objective comparability" and covered aspects of secondary structure assessment via circular dichroism spectroscopy,  higher order structural changes and method devopment for objective comparability studies.

January 2016
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

November 2015
Chiralabs extends its ion chromatography facility
Chiralabs extends its ion chromatography capabilities to complement its extensive spectroscopic techniques.

February 2015
Major reference work commissioned
The scientific publisher Elsevier has just commissioned the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Spectroscopy and Spectrometry, of which Dr George Tranter from Chiralabs is a co-editor. This major reference work is aimed at professional spectroscopists in industry and academia.

January 2015
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

June 2014
Happy Birthday!
The Begbroke Science Park celebrates its 15th anniversary. For this occasion, a summer showcase was held for leaders from business, the University of Oxford and county councillors . Chiralabs exhibited its services at this well-attended event.

April 2014
Chiralabs makes sweet music.
Chiralabs develops for one of its clients a unique coating for high valued musical instruments.

January 2014
Chiralabs wishes a Happy New Year to all!

June 2013
Chiralabs extends its elemental analysis services
Chiralabs extends its elemental and surface analysis capabilities to complement its extensive spectroscopic techniques. 

January 2013
Chiralabs wishes  a Happy New Year to all!

September 2012
Another major reference work published
The scientific publisher Elsevier has just released the first edition of the major work "Comprehensive Chirality" which is available in nine hardback volumes or online via ScienceDirect.  Dr George Tranter from Chiralabs is editor of volume eight, focusing on separations and analysis of chiral compounds. This major reference work is aimed at professionals dealing with chiral materials in industry and academia. Please consult our literature section  for further details. 

May 2012
Happy Birthday!
Chiralabs celebrates the 10th anniversary of its incorporation as a limited company. 

March 2012
George Tranter from Chiralabs  is invited speaker at the Chromatographic Society Symposium on Chromatographic characterisation and purification techniques for Biopharm
The Chromatographic Society Symposium was held on the 14th-15th of March at GSK Stevenage (UK) and focussed on monoclonal antibody derived drugs, at which George Tranter, the CEO of Chiralabs, was an invited speaker.  His talk was on "Chiroptical spectroscopy for biopharm characterisation: biopharmaceuticals problems solving" and covered aspects of mAb structural stability,  higher order structural changes, transition metal binding to mAbs, diffuse reflectance, LC-CD and SuperSpectra spectral fingerprinting for biosimilar comparability.

February 2012
Chiralabs agrees for Ceutechem Ltd to market CrystalGEM® service
Chiralabs has granted the right for Ceutechem Ltd (Oxfordshire) to market Chiralabs'  predictive crystallisation technology CrystalGEM® service. The partnership not only facilitates small scale laboratory screening to find new polymorphs, solvates, and crystal habits, but with the expertise of Graham Ruecroft, CEO of Ceutechem, as an industrial process and crystallization chemist, helps design creative scale-up and process methodology for clients.

January 2012
Chiralabs wishes  a Happy New Year to all!

July 2011
George Tranter from Chiralabs  is invited speaker at the CD2011 13th International Conference on Chiroptical Spectroscopy
The international CD2011 conference was held on the 24th-28th of July in Oxford (UK) and focussed on Chiroptical Spectroscopy, at which George Tranter, the CEO of Chiralabs, was an invited speaker and session chair.  His talk was on "Circular Dichroism for Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Problem-solving" and covered aspects of mAb structural stability, immunoglobulin catalytic metal-binding, Liquid Chromatography-CD for complex chiral mixture analysis, diffuse reflectance CD of amorphous powders  (lactose-protein-lipid materials) and multi-spectroscopic approaches of problem-solving.   

June 2011
Chiralabs helps in improving chiral standards
Following on from a detailed study of natural product chirality and optical rotation, Chiralabs has submitted data to the US Food Chemical Codex to prompt and support a revision in the food grade acceptance criteria for limonene.   The potential revisions are available and  open for comment on the FCC's website. 

January 2011
Chiralabs wishes  a Happy New Year to all!

November 2010
Coral Spawning of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Members of Chiralabs staff visited the Great Barrier Reef to observe the coral spawning.  Staff have been following the progress of the reef for ten years, observing the changes in its health visually and spectroscopically.

June 2010
Chiralabs offers a new comprehensive characterisation package for biotech products
Chiralabs now offers a new service: BioSpecXLTM , a comprehensive package of spectroscopic measurements for the characterisation of biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology products in solution.  BioSpecXL provides a detailed, interpretable fingerprint of the nature and behaviour of a substance and is applicable to most biotechnology products. It enables batch -to-batch comparisons and formulation optimisation with rigour and is a powerful method of comparing biosimiliars.  Features ranging from concentration through to complex high-order structural folding, denaturing, decomposition, stability, PTM and contamination can be assessed - contact us to find out more. 

February 2010
Major reference work published
The scientific publisher Elsevier has just released the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Spectroscopy and Spectrometry, of which Dr George Tranter from Chiralabs is a co-editor. This major reference work, aimed at professional spectroscopists in industry and academia, is available in three hardback volumes or online via ScienceDirect. Please consult our literature section  for further details on the encyclopedia. 

January 2010
Chiralabs wishes  a Happy New Year to all!

September 2009
Chiralabs increases its facilities
Chiralabs has again expanded its laboratories in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. 

March 2009
Chiralabs has designed and developed Diffuse Reflectance Circular Dichroism
Chiralabs has designed and developed a novel Diffuse Reflectance Circular Dichroism approach for the spectroscopic characterisation of solids, suitable for the investigation of biological and bioflora samples.   

February 2009
Chiralabs extends its Biofuel analysis
Chiralabs extends its Biofuel characterisation capabilities, involving a suite of complementary FT-IR, NIR and chromatographic techniques with proprietary data analysis, for the optimisation of biodiesel production processes. 

December 2008
Collaborative work between Chiralabs and Professor George Fleet, Oxford University, is published in the journal Tetrahedron: Asymmetry (Elsevier)
The paper entitled "Carbon-branched d-tetrahydrofuran sugar amino acids (SAAs) as dipeptide isostere scaffolds" describes the synthesis of the first branched sugar amino acid.
Printed version of the full article in : Tetrahedron: Asymmetry(2008), 19(24),2887-2894.

September 2008
Collaborative work between Chiralabs and Merck Serono is published in the journal BioProcess International (Informa Life Sciences Group)
The paper entitled "Higher-Order Structure Comparison of Proteins derived from Different Clones or Processes  : Unbiased assessment of Spectra by Quantitative CD" describes a  method for defining objective acceptance criteria for circular dichroism analysis of biopharmaceuticals.
Printed version of the full article in : Bioprocess International (2008), 6(8), p52-59.

September 2008
A paper on a collaborative work between Dr George Tranter and Professor George Fleet, Oxford University, has received the award of the Most Cited Paper for the 2004-2007 period in the journal Tetrahedron: Asymmetry (Elsevier)
The paper entitled "Towards hydroxylated nylon 6:Linear and cyclic oligomers from a protected 6-amino-6-deoxy-D-galactonate-A novel class of carbopeptoid-cyclodextrin (CPCD)" describes the synthesis and circular dichroism study of a class of compounds with structural features of both a cyclic peptide and a cyclodextrin.
Printed version of the full article in : Tetrahedron: asymetry(2004), 15(4), p627-638.

June 2008
Chiralabs features in Chemistry World
The activities of Chiralabs in the fields of crystallisation, solubility, chirality and biopharmaceuticals and the implications for the pharmaceutical industry are discussed:
"The physical and structural properties of drugs are of crucial importance. By rationally considering such properties as early as possible, problems can be pre-empted in drug development and manufacture – ensuring a more efficient and economical progression to market……"

February 2008
Collaborative work between Chiralabs and Professor Laurence Barron, FRS (Glasgow University) is published in the journal Biochemistry (ACS publications)
The paper entitled "Raman Optical Activity and Circular Dichroism reveal dramatic differences in the influence of divalent Copper and Manganese ions on Prion protein folding" shows the different effects Copper ions can have on the structure of the Prion protein depending on which stage they are added.
Printed version of the full article in : Biochemistry (2008), 47(8), p2510-2517.

January 2008
Chiralabs doubles its laboratory space
Chiralabs has substantially expanded its laboratories in Kidlington, Oxfordshire.  The additional laboratory space enables enhanced biopharmaceutical  analysis, particularly studies of biosimilars.  The new facilities complement Chiralab's existing chiral analysis, spectroscopic and crystallisation facilities. 

October 2007
George Tranter from Chiralabs gave a talk at the PASG Autumn 2007 meeting
The PASG meeting was held on the 8th-9th of October in Northamptonshire (UK) and focussed on New Directions: Science and Technology. The title of George Tranter's talk was  "CrystalGEM: rational crystallisation control and screening".  The effectiveness and advantages of rational crystallisation screening using CrystalGEM for pharmaceutical development were demonstrated.   

August 2007
Collaborative work between Chiralabs and Professor Laurence Barron, FRS (Glasgow University) is published online in the journal Proteins: Structure, Function & Bioinformatics (Wiley)
The paper entitled "Residual structure in disordered peptides & unfolded proteins from multivariate analysis and ab initio simulation of Raman Optical Activity data" explains how it has been possible to find the 3-dimensional folding of virus-coat proteins using the spectroscopic pattern recognition techniques developed by Chiralabs with Raman Optical Activity spectroscopy developed by Laurence Barron. Remarkably, the proteins adopt a structure that has not been found for any other class of proteins.
Printed version of the full article in : Proteins: Structure, Function & Bioinformatics (2008), 70(3), p823-833.

July 2007
Chiralabs becomes an Associate Member of the Pharmaceutical Analytical Sciences Group (PASG).

March 2007
Chiralabs signs a marketing agreement with Prosonix Ltd for the marketing of CrystalGEM®
Chiralabs agrees for Prosonix Ltd to market CrystalGEM®.

September 2006
Chiralabs moves to new premises
Following a rapid expansion of the business in 2006, Chiralabs moves to state-of-the-art new office and laboratory space located in the Begbroke Centre for Innovation and Enterprise (Kidlington, Oxfordshire).

March 2006
The marketing MoU with C3 Technology is transfered to Prosonix Ltd (Oxford) to market CrystalGEM®
Chiralabs agrees for Prosonix Ltd to market CrystalGEM® .

November 2005
CrystalGEM®, developed by Chiralabs, wins the Worldwide CPhI Gold Innovation Award
Crystal
GEM® wins the Gold Innovation Award at the largest pharmaceutical tradeshow in the world, the CPhI, held in Madrid. CPhI is supported by 1,500 pharmaceutical and related companies from  110 countries and with 20,000 attendees.

 

March 2005
Chiralabs participates in the MfB 2004-2007  PC4 programme
Chiralabs is to play a key role in the DTI funded MfB research programme "Development and validation of higher-order structure measurement methods to support ICH guidelines"

December 2004
Chiralabs with C3 Technology launches CrystalGEM® at CPhI In Brussels
Chiralabs launches officially ,with C3 technology, CrystalGEM® at the largest pharmaceutical tradeshow in the world, CPhI, held in Brussels in 2004.

September 2004
Chiralabs signs MoU for C3 Technology (Accentus) to market CrystalGEM®
Chiralabs has signed a memorandum of understanding for C3 Technology (Accentus, Harwell) to market Chiralabs' new predictive crystallisation technology CrystalGEM®.

September 2004
Chiralabs participates in the MfB 2004-2007  PC3 programme
Chiralabs is to play a key role in the DTI funded MfB research programme "Strengthening, quality control of biopharmaceutical products through the establishment of structure-function relationships"

April 2004
Chiralabs funds and pursues a collaborative research programme on the luminescence and biofluorescence of marine organisms at Imperial College London
The research programme is to investigate fluorescence properties of marine organisms found in reef systems under threat from environmental changes.

April 2003
Chiralabs, NPL and Imperial College London to collaborate on the characterisation of monoclonal antibodies
The research, funded under the DTI's MfB programme, will investigate the characterisation of monoclonal antibodies and structure-function relationships of biopharmaceuticals.

November 2002
Chiralabs collaborates with the Centre for Biospectroscopy at Imperial College
Chiralabs is to collaborate with the Centre for Biospectroscopy at the Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London University. For further information click here.

September 2002
Inaugural BEACON Conference
The first Biopharmaceutical Effective Analysis Conference was held at Warwick University on the 2nd September 2002. For further information click here.

May 2002
Chiralabs helps validate biopharmaceutical analysis
Chiralabs is collaborating with the UK national standards laboratories to assess and validate spectroscopic analysis of biopharmaceuticals. For further information click here.

May 2002
Chiralabs in DTI funded Measurements for Biotechnology study
Chiralabs joins forces with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), GlaxoSmithKline and Imperial College in a Measurements for Biotechnology project funded by the UK government (DTI). For further information click here.

April 2002
Chiralabs joins BEACON
Chiralabs joins the Biopharmaceutical Effective Analysis CONsortium. For further information click here.