Date: 2009-03-11

E-NEWSLETTER - March 2009
Date: 2009-03-10
Source: BioDetection Systems
BDS’ newsletter 2009

Dear reader,

Thank you very much for all your interest and comments on our previous newsletter. In the current one we are happy to inform you about some highlights of our past and present activities. Again, most news items will be linked to BDS’ homepage, which aims to be a comprehensive source of information on state-of-the-art biological detection systems. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions, comments, ideas and news items. We wish you pleasant reading.

With best regards,

Peter Behnisch and Bart van der Burg


This letter contains the following topics:

• Open Day 2009 on Biodetectors for dioxins/dioxin-like PCBs for feed/food
• Announcement new business cooperation’s
• Renaissance for endocrine disrupting compound (EDC) testing in water
– 15 new BDS CALUX^® licenses just the last 6 months due to new water reports
• Announcement next International DR CALUX^® Intercalibration test (BICS 2009)
• Meet BDS – Upcoming events
• List of international reference projects BDS
• Special price for our product
• Panel of CALUX^® assays
• Selection of recent publications on CALUX^® and other “Biodetectors”
• International conferences


Open Day 2009 on Biodetectors for dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs in feed/food

On March 27, just after the ProSafeBeef Conference in Dublin, Ireland, BDS will organise an Open Day in Amsterdam. The focus of this open day will be on the international application of the DR CALUX^® assay in feed- and food crises and national monitoring programs. The program will be of interest to governmental-, and industrial parties involved in quality control and public safety assurance in a broad sense. This Open Day conference will be one day only with a morning program of presentations by BDS and well-known experts in the field of biodetectors for feed/food control and national monitoring programs. In the afternoon there will be a possibility to visit BDS’ laboratories and demonstrations of a range of CALUX^® technologies for different applications will be given. In the evening we will organise a surprise event. Please check our webpage: http://www.bds.nl/1/news/53.php how to register for this Open Day.

Announcement new business cooperation’s

BDS is happy to announce the establishment of various new global partners to be able to meet the increasing demands for our assays and to further improve local services. Of course we value every new cooperation equally. Nevertheless we would like to highlight some of them to give you a flavour of our progress.

• We are excited to announce our new cooperative partnership with Labser in Chile, a leading food and feed testing laboratory in South-America . Labser in Chile is an accredited laboratory ISO 17025 and also accredited by the Livestock and Agriculture Service, SAG, for the microbiology official program in meat. Through our cooperation with Labser we are currently running the National Monitoring Program with several industrial partner from the pork industry , feed and ingredients for the feed industry. In Addition to the Official Program Labser offers Dioxins Analysis for internal control. This activity is going on under the umbrella of the Ministry of Agriculture of Chile, SAG. By adding the highly professional partner Labser to our network of distributors, BDS clients in South-America can now be assisted in a straightforward manners.

"Joining BDS' network enables us to offer a one stop solution for food/feed safety control in South-America as well as adding new R&D tools such as the panel of CALUX^® technologies. This is the first step in beginning to distribute their innovative biodetectors through all our distributor channels," said the CEO Mr. Sebastian Meyer.



Photo: DR CALUX^® Conference in Santiago 14th November 2008

More than 150 delegates joined our first CALUX^® seminar organised by Labser on 14th November 2008. Representatives from government, R&D institutes, universities and industry showed intensive interest in the presentation of Prof. Brouwer, CEO and founder of BDS. He explained in detail the lessons Europe learned from several severe dioxins- and PCB crises during the last two decades, such as the crisis situation in 1996 in Brazil, 1998 in Belgium, 2004 in Australia or 2008 in Italy. He explained the usefulness of a rapid, quantitative, cheap and easy-to-learn biodetection method for such persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the low femtogram concentration range, allowing rapid identification of the source and solution to the problems.

• BDS and Tecna SRL (Trieste, Italy) announced a distribution and service representation agreement for all CALUX^® technologies and services at our first conference in Bologna on 16th December 2008. We are extremely happy with this professional partnership in Italy.

“After the start of the dioxin crisis in 2008 in Italy the rapid, cheap and easy-to-learn dioxin screening method DR CALUX^® is playing a key role in the food and feed safety control in Italy, “ explained Dr. Maurizio Paleologo, CEO and founder of Tecna Srl. “Tecna’s long time experience in the food/feed testing market with our well-known ELISA tests in Italy, Spain and other neighbour countries makes us an ideal partner for clients in the governmental, R&D or industrial sector”.

“We are very excited about the opportunity to work with BDS. This partnership will enhance the availability of the CALUX^® products and services to many new customers in the Mediterranean, an area that shows tremendous growth potential.”

At the food/feed and environmental BioDetectors conference in Bologna we were delighted to welcome presentations of several laboratories involved in official feed-food control, such as the first Italian DR CALUX^® license from the IZS Brescia (Dr. Bertasi & team), NRLs from Italy (IZS Teramo, Dr. Scortichini) and the Dutch RIKILT (Dr. Hoogenboom). We were very honoured by the contribution from the European Commissioner for Food/Feed Safety related to dioxins/dl-PCBs, Mr. Frans Verstraete.

Photo: DR CALUX^® Conference in Bologna 16th December 2008 – Team of Tecna

We are also very please to announce our new partners in Russia (Laax), Israel (Da-Mor), Iran (Nafea Science); Korea (NeoEnBiz) and Greece (Dimoupoulos).
A listing of all BDS’ global partners can be viewed at our homepage:

Meeting reports

• "Monitoring Effects of Aquatic Oil Pollution" Date: January 20-22, 2009

Venue: Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany (click for more information)

This symposium, organized by Prof. dr. Hauke Harms of the UFZ, was the final symposium of the EU framework program FaceIt. At this interesting symposium the most recent developments were presented on adequate and effective biological methods to detect the presence, nature and magnitude of pollution disasters and their effects on aquatic living beings and humans. As one of the FaceIt partners, Dr. Bart van der Burg of BDS presented a new mammalian cell-based bioassays for the detection of oil toxicity, the PAH CALUX^® (Van der Burg et al (2009) Mammalian cell line based assays for toxic poly halogenated and polyaromatic hydrocarbons in oils and lipids. In: Microbiology of Hydrocarbons, Oils, Lipids (K Timmis, ed). Springer, Berlin, in press). Dioxin receptor activation is a major pathway involved in PAH carcinogenicity and a modified version of the DR CALUX^® assay successfully classified carcinogenic PAHs and non-carcinogenic PAHs. The PAH CALUX^® assay is a promising tool to measure the toxicologically relevant PAH fraction in oil polluted sea water fraction.

• “Biomarkers in newborns and their mothers - consequences for children's health”; Date: Monday, February 2, 2009

Venue: Stockholm University, Sweden (click for more information)

This symposium, organized by Prof. dr. Jos Kleinjans of the University Maastricht, was the yearly event to update all participants in the ongoing research of the EU framework program NewGeneris. At this interesting symposium the most recent developments were presented on state-of-the-art and effective biological methods to detect the children’s health. As one of the NewGeneris partners, Dr. Dan Segerbäck from the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm, gave an overview about Biomarkers of exposure such as the DR-, ER-, and AR CALUX^®and their applications. The CALUX^® assays are promising tools to measure the toxicologically relevant dioxin-like and hormone-like compounds in blood plasma in newborns and their mothers.


Renaissance for endocrine disrupters (EDC) testing in water – 15 new BDS CALUX^® license just the last few months due to new water reports

In two new reports about testing of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) in water from the Global Water Research Council (click for more information) as well as from the EC FP6 Project “TECHNEAU” (click for more information) different bioassays are compared. In both reports the high sensitivity and high quality of the ER CALUX^® as well as of the other CALUX^® systems are described. It becomes also visible that EDC testing should not only focus on estrogen-like compounds acting through the estrogen receptor(ER), but also on the other hormones receptors such as AR, TR, PR or GR. This has further been stressed by our recent collaborative publication with Kiwa Water Research (KWR) (click for more information) in Environmental Science and Technology (click for more information). This shows the need of integrating high quality biomonitoring in routine testing for water quality. BDS is performing such analyses since many years with proven records, and can also introduce these methods in your laboratory.

Announcement next International DR CALUX^® Intercalibration test (BICS 2009)

Matrices: milkpowder; meat

Sample shipment: April 2009

Costs: appr. € 500.--

For further information: please contact us.


Special price for our products

Reference materials

Reference materials have been generated for food and feed analysed for dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs. The materials have been analysed by 21 DR CALUX^® laboratories and 2 HRGC/HRMS laboratories. A complete listing of products can be viewed at our homepage. Click here for a list.


Panel of CALUX assays

Through our continuous R&D activities we now have expanded the panel of CALUX^® cell lines extensively. The areas of application of these assays are divers and include environmental-, food and feed-, clinical-, pharmaceutical-, sport doping-, occupational health- and toxicity monitoring of chemicals. Various of these applications have been described in our new brochures (click for more information). The extension of this highly standardised panel of reporter cell lines will be a continuing activity in the coming years, and already several new assays are currently being developed (examples indicated in white). Please contact us for further information on any of these assays. Our R&D department can rapidly generate new assays, also custom-made. We would be happy to discuss your specific needs.



List of International Reference Projects BDS currently involved

Through our innovative biodetector tools we are involved in many major national- and international R&D projects, such as European Union FP 6 and FP 7 sponsored projects. Please find below an overview of the major BDS projects.





We are interested in collaborative research projects evaluating biological detection systems, including our CALUX^® panel for new applications. Please contact us if you share this interest.


Selection of recent publications on CALUX^® and other “Biodetectors”

Van der Linden, S., Heringa, M.B., Man, H.Y., Sonneveld, E., Puijker, L., Brouwer, A., Van der Burg, B. (2008) Detection of multiple hormonal activities in waste water effluents and surface water, using a panel of steroid receptor CALUX^® bioassays, Environmental Science and Technology 42: 5814-20.
New application of a panel of CALUX^® bioassay for effluents of hospital-,industrial and municipal waste water treatment plants showing elevated levels of glucocorticoids especially in municipial- and hospital waste water effluents. (BDS with colleagues from Kiwa/KWR)

Houtman, C.J., Sterk, S.S., Van de Heijning, M.P., Brouwer, A., Stephany, R.W., Van der Burg, B., Sonneveld, E. Detection of anabolic androgenic steroid abuse in doping control using in vitro reporter gene bioassays. Analytica Chimica Acta., in press.
A study on the use of the AR CALUX^® assay, showing it can be a valuable tool for the analysis of AAS for doping control purposes, being able to detect androgens irrespective of their chemical nature, and complex mixtures (poly drug use). Therefore, the method is highly complementary to chemical-analytical methods.

Van der Burg, B., Schreurs, R., Van der Linden, S., Seinen, W., Brouwer, A., Sonneveld, E. (2008) Endocrine effects of polycyclic musks: do we smell a rat?”. Int. J. Andrology, 31:188-93.
This study evaluates the endocrine effects of polycyclic musks by a panel of cell based hormone receptor regulated reporter gene assays (CALUX^® panel).

Jacobs, M.N., Janssens, W., Bernauer, U., Brandon, E., Coecke, S., Combes, R., Edwards, P., Freidig, A., Freyberger, A., Kolanczyk, R., Mc Ardle C., Mekenyan, O., Schmieder, P., Schrader, T., Takeyoshi, M., Van der Burg, B. (2008) The use of metabolizing systems for in vitro testing of endocrine disruptors. Current Drug Metabolism 9: 796-826.
Originally prepared for the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this detailed review paper reviews why in vitro assays for endocrine active substances should incorporate mammalian systems of metabolism and metabolic enzyme systems, and indicates how this could be done.

Wenger D, Gerecke AC, Heeb NV, Schmid P, Hueglin C, Naegeli H, Zenobi R. In vitro estrogenicity of ambient particulate matter: contribution of hydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. J Appl Toxicol. 2008 Nov 19. [Epub ahead of print]
This study evaluates the endocrine effects of PAHs from ambient particulate matter measured by ER CALUX^®.

Wölz J, Engwall M, Maletz S, Olsman Takner H, van Bavel B, Kammann U, Klempt M, Weber R, Braunbeck T, Hollert H. Changes in toxicity and Ah receptor agonist activity of suspended particulate matter during flood events at the rivers Neckar and Rhine - a mass balance approach using in vitro methods and chemical analysis.Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2008 Oct;15(7):536-53. Epub 2008 Oct 21.
In this study, the impacts of two flood events triggered by intense rain at the rivers Neckar and Rhine (Southern Germany) were studied by evaluating AhR activity by DR CALUX^® and other cell based tests.

Halldorsson TI, Thorsdottir I, Meltzer HM, Strøm M, Olsen SF. Dioxin-like activity in plasma among Danish pregnant women: dietary predictors, birth weight and infant development. Environ Res. 2009 Jan;109(1):22-8. Epub 2008 Oct 21.
The study indicated that dietary patterns associated with high fat intake (rather than fish consumption) may lead to increased plasma dioxin-like activity (measured using DR CALUX^®) and in utero exposure might be related to early infant development.


BioDetectors conference report

BioDetectors 2008, hosted by BDS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

More than 20 speakers and poster presenters contributed to this event with several presentations which can be downloaded from the BDS website (click here for more information).

Meet BDS - Upcoming events

BDS Seminars

Moscow
March 16th, Peter Behnisch (In cooperation with Dr. Denis Feshin)
“BioDetectors for environmental and feed/food control ”
Location: University of Moscow. Please contact BioDetection Systems or Dr. Denis Feshin, Eco-analytical Laboratory, Inst. Of Ecology and Evolution RAS, (Tel. +7 499 1351380, Email: dens@dioxin.ru) for more details.

Tel Aviv
March 31th, Peter Behnisch (In cooperation with Dr. Skalski, Bactochem; Mr. Moti Horowtz, Da-Mor and Ms Orna Bar Els, Bio-Or)
“BioDetectors for environmental, feed/food control and pharmaceutical applications”
Location: Bactochem, 18 Hacharesh St., Ness-Ziona 74031, Israel. Please contact Dr. Eldad Elron, Head of the Environmental Dept., Batochem (Tel. +972 (0) 52 6117317-204, Email: eldad@bactochem.co.il) or BioDetection Systems for more details.

BDS Oral Presentations and Booth

England
February 26th, Harrie Besselink
“DR CALUX”
Location: UK, National Reference Laboratory - Training Day; Dioxins and PCBs Workshop at CSL in Sand Hutton, York, England.

Ireland
March 25-26th, Peter Behnisch
“DR CALUX^® for feed/food control”
Location: Ashtown, Dublin. Please contact BioDetection Systems or TEAGASC for more details.


International conferences 2009



Please be so kind to inform us about other interesting conferences….

Disclaimer: BDS compiles this newsletter with the greatest care. BDS, however, does not necessarily support contents or views expressed in this newsletter or that of the linked sites and documents, nor guaranties accuracy of the information provided. It accepts no liability for consequent losses or damages due to the contents of this letter and linked information.