LBT Innovations in first US sale of pharma lab system

Automated laboratory systems manufacturer LBT Innovations has completed the sale of an APAS Independence instrument (pictured) to Bristol Myers Squibb in the United States, the first to a pharmaceutical customer in the US.

The APAS Independence instrument utilises artificial intelligence, image analysis and software engineering to monitor quality in a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility by automating the analysis and interpretation of bacteria culture plates collected during environmental monitoring.

The sale, the eighth since the instrument was launched in March this year, comes part way through a three month evaluation by Bristol Myers Squibb.

LBT Innovations CEO & Managing Director Brent Barnes told investors: “We remain focussed on delivering against our strategy to engage with large multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers for the sale and placement of APAS instruments.

“We remain highly engaged in supporting Bristol Myers Squibb with their evaluation of APAS Independence at their Microbiology Centre of Excellence in the US.

“The evaluation is an important process that determines the potential benefits our APAS technology may bring to enhance environmental monitoring operations across their global manufacturing facilities.”

Bristol Myers Squibb’s evaluation of the APAS Independence technology is continuing to assess the suitability of the technology for deployment to sites across their network.

The initial phase of the evaluation focused on the performance of APAS Independence to read the 90mm culture plates and is expected to be completed in H1 CY25. A new application is under development for 55mm contact culture plates.

LBT Innovations first product was an automated culture plate streaking system called MicroStreak.

The company then collaborated with the Australian Institute of Machine Learning to develop the Automated Plate Assessment System (APAS) which performs automated image capture, analysis and interpretation of culture plates.

This was further developed in partnership with pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca for pharmaceutical quality control applications – AstraZeneca has since purchased five APAS Independence PharmaQC laboratory instruments.

Further reading:
LBT Innovations PharmaQC device ‘commercially ready’
LBT Innovations sells five pharma QC systems
Picture: LBT Innovations