SSB says new dishes cut contamination risk in QC testing
The dishes – marketed under the Microsart media trade name - are intended for quality control (QC) analysis.
Their innovative feature is a new lid system which, when used in combination with SSB filters, reduces the number of handling steps needed to transfer samples taken from manufacturing facilities and water supplies to media plates for colony growth during routine QC testing as spokesman Dominic Grone explained.
“The lid of the agar plates is used to lift up the membrane filter from the base support of the Microsart filter and the agar plates are then used for incubation and growth promotion” he told BioPharma-Reporter.com, explaining that it is the transfer method rather than the new lid design that reduces the risk of contamination.
“The transfer of the filter onto agar after filtration is usually done with a forceps. In our case inside the lid there is a ring of glue applied. The membrane sticks to this glue and can easily be lifted up and put on the agar part of the dish.
“This reduces handling and steps where external contamination could lead to false positive results. Less manipulation means better workflow and the more reliable the results.”
The new technology is intended for both biopharmaceutical firms and manufacturers of traditional small molecule drugs conducting microbiological analysis of facilities according to United States Pharmacopeia (USP) and European Pharmacopoeia (EP) requirements.
The Microsart media dishes and are available pre-filled with various different agar media types, such as Tryptic Soy Agar or R2A Agar.
