By Maria Ofitserova
Normally, summer and fall would mark our busy travel season with several important conferences and trade shows to prepare for and attend. With the majority of conferences cancelled, rescheduled or moved to virtual platforms, we are staying close to home and focusing on supporting our customers as they navigate the fast-changing COVID-19 pandemic situation.
After introducing the Onyx PCX at Pittcon in March 2020, we are happy to report positive feedback from users of our newest post-column derivatization instrument. One of our goals when developing the Onyx PCX was to ensure a seamless transition of methods from the Pinnacle PCX to the new model. This allows companies to minimize validation steps when switching to the Onyx PCX and early customer responses show our efforts were worth it! Our extra attention to this during design is definitely being appreciated now by laboratories who already have the Pinnacle PCX system and are looking to expand or update their instrumentation.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to drive expansion of biotech research and manufacturing, with many companies and contract laboratories using amino acids analysis to identify and characterize biopharmaceuticals, determine purity and optimize manufacturing processes. The Onyx PCX is uniquely suitable for performing with excellence in regulated environments. Easy and robust operation, extensive record-keeping capabilities for troubleshooting as well as regulatory compliance and the ability to work with any HPLC setup makes the Onyx PCX a great choice for any laboratory running amino acids analysis.
By spending our time here at home and not presenting at various technical conferences, myself and the other chemists also had the opportunity to get creative and stretch beyond scientific posters into the world of marketing! We have created short videos highlighting the best features of Onyx PCX and capabilities of post-column amino acids analysis. You may have seen our LinkedIn posts about these videos – we are really quite proud of our work. Special thanks to David Mazawa for contributing the technical wizardry and to our graphic design consultant, Phil Mowery, for adding animations and sharpening up our look!
As always, at Pickering Laboratories we are concentrating on providing the best possible service and support for our customers. We have been hard at work strengthening our supply chain, adjusting production and inventory to meet the changing demand and collaborating closely with other companies to support our partners during this difficult time. We know that our customers will appreciate our grit and resilience during 2020; we want to contribute to the best parts of what is working for your business as well.
Dear valued customer,
First up, Gabriela is a member of our production team and back in May she celebrated her 20th year with Pickering Laboratories! (Yep… you read that right… 20 years!) Gabriela is our resident expert when it comes to manufacturing Trione reagent, so all of our Amino Acids customers have benefited from her careful attention and strong work ethic. Fun fact, Gabriela was the very first employee whose work was moved to the “new” laboratory way back in 1999! While we are postponing until post-pandemic throwing her a right proper bash, we want to take a minute and offer up a socially-distanced cheers to Gabriela for 20 years of service!
Next month, we will celebrate with Anita, our packaging specialist, as she reaches her 20-year mark here at Pickering Laboratories as well! Anita’s first day at Pickering was the day before Halloween back in 2000, which must have been pretty spooky considering she moved to the U.S. from Poland in May of the same year and had NO IDEA about Halloween! Anita describes her total confusion when she showed up to work on her second day only to be confronted by a fully dressed witch at the door! These days, she loves Halloween and the tradition of handing out candy to neighborhood kids.
Pickering Laboratories also wants to celebrate with two of our newest employees who have just hit their 1-year mark! Yuliana Lopez is one of our Customer Service Representatives; we’re sure that many of you have interacted with Yuliana and seen first-hand her dedication to our customers. Yuliana loves to build relationships and she’s very customer-centric. Her ability to multitask is illustrated by her management of international and domestic orders simultaneously, while working with freight forwarders and coordinating with internal Pickering departments! Yuliana is the front line for making sure all of our products are available on time and as promised for our customers. She takes pride in doing right by our customers daily, and Yuliana truly wears so many different hats already in her first year! We are extremely happy to have her as part of the Pickering family and look forward to see her continued growth within the organization!
Rudy Suez, our Customer Service Manager, is also hitting his 1-year anniversary! Rudy has been instrumental in bringing this new management position from planning to reality, and in his first year he’s already become an integral part of our leadership team. Always ready with a warm smile and a cold beer, Rudy works with Yuliana and Gloria to provide customers with accurate orders and rapid service. He’s tackled new challenges in extending beyond his sales and customer service experience too, by tackling Accounts Receivable (AR) management as well – and knocking it out of the park! 2020 has been a big year for Rudy, since he’s learning to balance his life as a new dad with his role here at Pickering. Seems like we’re more likely to catch him with a hot coffee than a cold beer these days – quite the change from Friday afternoons in 2019! So, congratulations to Rudy on his work-a-versary and we hope he keeps loving every minute of fatherhood!
As novel Covid-19 virus spreads around the globe, pharmaceutical companies worldwide are racing to develop vaccines, therapeutic agents and prophylactics to combat the disease. A lot of these pharmaceuticals are biologics – in other words, they are either isolated from natural sources or manufactured via biotechnology methods.
The challenges that Covid-19 pandemic presents for the pharmaceutical and health care industry are staggering, and they impact manufacturers of medical devices and personal protective equipment as well. This brings into focus the need for artificial bodily fluids that can be used for both ongoing testing and tackling the new developments introduced by the Coronavirus crisis.