Malvern MicroCal PEAQ-DSC for vaccine formulation stability

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Since the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian scientists together with colleagues around the world have been working around the clock to speed up the development of a vaccine. To support research in pursuit of accelerating drug discovery and development, it is essential to foster a collaborative environment with access to the latest technologies and expertise.

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is a powerful technique which can used to understand and predict the stability of a potential SARS-CoV-2 vaccine formulation. DSC is considered by the biopharmaceutical industry as the ‘gold standard’ thermal stability assay, measuring the enthalpy (ΔH) and temperature (Tm) of thermally induced structural transitions of molecules in solution. This information provides valuable insights into protein stability — an important indicator of whether a drug will remain functional during formulation and storage without chemical alteration or aggregation, which can give rise to immunogenic responses and in some cases, patient death.

Malvern’s MicroCal PEAQ-DSC microcalorimeter allows the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of proteins, nucleic acids, lipids and other macromolecules to be determined. It is sensitive, simple to use, requires little assay development and no labelling or immobilisation. It is designed to measure tight binding constants (up to 10²⁰M^-1). Integrated software with automated data analysis supports the generation of non-subjective, reproducible data. For high throughput and unattended operation, the MicroCal PEAQ-DSC automated system uses an autosampler for rapid screening of thermal stability for up to 50 samples/day.

For more information: https://www.atascientific.com.au/products/malvern-microcal-peaq-dsc-automated/.