ReportWire

Tag: lab

  • Federal judge orders Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA medical research grants

    A federal judge Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore $500 million in UCLA medical research grants, halting for now a nearly two-month funding crisis that UC leaders said threatened the future of the nation’s premier public university system.

    The opinion by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California added hundreds of UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grants to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to the University of California.

    Lin’s order provides the biggest relief to UCLA but affects federal funding awarded to all 10 UC campuses. Lin ruled that the NIH grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.

    In addition to the medical grant freezes — which had prompted talks of possible UCLA layoffs or closures of labs conducting cancer and stroke research, among other studies — Lin said the government would have to restore millions of Department of Defense and Department of Transportation grants to UC schools.

    Lin explained her thinking during a hearing last week. She said the Trump administration committed a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”

    The preliminary injunction will be in place as the lawsuit proceeds. But in broadening the case, Lin agreed with plaintiffs that there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.

    The suit was originally filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. UCLA faculty with NIH grants later joined the case.

    The University of California is not a party in the suit.

    The judge, a Biden appointee, told Department of Justice lawyers to make a court filing by Sept. 29 explaining “all steps” the government has take to comply with her order or, if necessary, explain why restoring grants “was not feasible.”

    UC did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment about the ruling.

    Spokespeople for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, and the Department of Justice did not respond to questions from The Times about the government’s next steps. The Trump administration had appealed an earlier ruling in the case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Last month, the appeals court declined to reverse that ruling by Lin.

    Prior court orders in the case have resulted in government notices to campuses within days saying that funding will flow again.

    “This is wonderful news for UC researchers and should be tremendously consequential in ongoing UC negotiations with the Trump administration,” said Claudia Polsky, a UC Berkeley law professor who is part of the legal team behind the suit. “The restoration of more than half a billion dollars to UCLA in NIH funding alone gives UC the strongest hand it has had yet in resisting unlawful federal demands.”

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, worked with Polsky and argued the case in front of Lin.

    “The judge made clear what she said previously and the 9th Circuit held: The termination of grants was illegal and they must be restored,” he said.

    Trump administration lawyers argued against lifting more grant freezes, saying the case was in the wrong jurisdiction.

    A Justice Department lawyer, Jason Altabet, said during the hearing last week that instead of a District Court lawsuit filed by faculty, the proper venue would be for UC to file a case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not correctly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.

    In her Monday opinion, Lin disagreed with the government’s position that professors could not sue in District Court or the federal claims court.

    Lin addressed a hypothetical scenario posed to the government in court filings and during last week’s hearing, in which she asked what recourse a faculty member had if “a future administration terminated all grants to researchers with Asian last names.” The government’s position was that there would be none unless the person’s employer, the university, sued, because the grants are given to the institutions, not the researchers.

    Writing Monday, Lin called that an “extreme” view. “This court will not shut its doors” on researchers suing over “constitutional and statutory rights,” she wrote.

    The Trump administration rescinded $584 million in UCLA grants in late July, citing allegations of campus antisemitism, use of race in admissions and the school’s recognition of transgender identities as its reasons. The awards included $81 million from the National Science Foundation — also restored last month by Lin — and $3 million from the Department of Energy, which is still suspended.

    Last month, the government proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded wide campus changes over admissions, protest rules, gender-affirming healthcare for minors and the disclosure of internal campus records, among other demands, in exchange for restoring the money.

    UCLA has said it made changes in the last year to improve the climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Chancellor Julio Frenk has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.

    UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.

    The case wasclosely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.

    Neil Garg, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA whose roughly four-year, $2.9 million grant was suspended over the summer, said that “people on the campus will be overjoyed” by the injunction.

    “From the scientific side of it, it is incredibly warming to hear that, to see that sort of decision,” said Garg said. “But we will wait and see how things play out.”

    Garg’s 19-person lab works on developing new organic chemistry reactions that could have pharmaceutical applications. “We try to invent chemistry that is unknown,” he explained.

    No one in Garg’s lab lost jobs after his grant was frozen. After the suspension, Garg sought new funding sources. “I have been very aggressive, as have many of my colleagues, in applying,” he said. “Even if the funds are restored, we don’t know how quickly that will happen or how permanent that is.”

    Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience doctroal candidate at UCLA, had also lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.

    “I am really glad that [the suspension] didn’t last more than these two months,” said Rathbun, who hoped grants return “quickly and efficiently” so researchers can “use the money in ways that we desperately need.”

    Rathbun said the experience showed her “how incredibly precarious of a situation we are in as researchers. And how quickly our lives and our life’s work can seemingly be upended.”

    Jaweed Kaleem, Daniel Miller

    Source link

  • ‘A continual assault.’ How UCLA’s research faculty is grappling with Trump funding freeze

    Their medical research focuses on potentially lifesaving breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and developing tools to more easily diagnose debilitating diseases. Their studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and secure.

    But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA’s professors in these and many other fields has been imperiled by the Trump administration’s suspension of $584 million in grant funding, which University of California President James B. Milliken called a “death knell” to its transformative research.

    The freeze came after a July 29 U.S. Department of Justice finding that the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism they faced after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

    The fight over the funding stoppage intensified Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a $1-billion fine, among other concessions, to resolve the accusations — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue, calling the proposal “extortion.”

    Amid heightened tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, have been frozen.

    UCLA scholars described days of confusion as they struggle to understand how the loss of grants would affect their work and scramble to uncover new funding sources — or roles that would ensure their continued pay, or that of their colleagues. While professors still have jobs and paychecks to draw on, many others, including graduate students, rely on grant funding for their salaries, tuition and healthcare.

    At least for the moment, though, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet be interrupted. So far, no layoffs have been announced.

    Sydney Campbell, a UCLA cancer researcher whose grant funding has been cut, stands inside the Biomedical Sciences Research building at UCLA.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    Sydney Campbell, a pancreatic cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said her work — which aims to understand how diet affects the disease — is continuing for now. She has an independent fellowship that “hopefully will protect the majority of my salary.” But others, she said, don’t have that luxury.

    “It is absolutely going to affect people’s livelihoods. I already know of people … with families who are having to take pay cuts almost immediately,” said Campbell, who works for a lab that has lost two National Institutes of Health grants, including one that funds her research.

    Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly of cancers, but Campbell’s work could lead to a better understanding of it, paving the way for more robust prophylactic programs — and treatment plans — that may ultimately help tame the scourge.

    “Understanding how diet can impact cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,” said Campbell, a member of the UAW 4811 academic workers union. “Right now we can’t effectively do that because we don’t have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us actually be able to make recommendations based on science.”

    Campbell’s work — and that of many others at UCLA — is potentially groundbreaking. But it could soon be put on hold.

    “We have people who don’t know if they’re going to be able to purchase experimental materials for the rest of the month,” she said.

    Fears of existential crisis

    For some, the cuts have triggered something close to an existential crisis.

    After professor Dino Di Carlo, chair of the UCLA Samueli Bioengineering Department, learned that about 20 grants were suspended there — including four in his lab worth about $1 million — he felt a profound sadness. He said he doesn’t know why his grants were frozen, and there may not be money to pay his six researchers.

    So Di Carlo, who is researching diagnostics for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, took to LinkedIn, where he penned a post invoking the Franz Kafka novel “The Trial.” The unsettling tale is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and finds himself under arrest and then on trial — with no understanding of the situation.

    “Like Josef K., the people actually affected — the public, young scientists, patients waiting for better treatments and diagnostic tools — are left asking: What crime did we commit?” wrote Di Carlo. “They are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.”

    The LinkedIn post quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other responses. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on paychecks that come from now-suspended grants, said he appreciated the support.

    But, goodwill has its limits. “It doesn’t pay the rent for a student this month,” he said.

    Di Carlo’s research is partly focused on developing an at-home test that would detect Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, which are on the rise. Because no such product is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he said, people who’ve experienced a tick bite have to wait for lab results to confirm their infection.

    “This delay in diagnosis prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long-term health issues,” he said. “A rapid, point-of-care test would allow individuals to receive immediate results, enabling early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is most easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health outcomes.”

    Di Carlo lamented what he called “a continual assault on the scientific community” by the Trump administration, which has canceled billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding for universities across the country.

    It “just … hasn’t let up,” Di Carlo said.

    Scrambling for funds

    Some professors who’ve lost grants have spent long hours scrambling to secure new sources of funding.

    Di Carlo said he was in meetings all week to identify which researchers are affected by the cuts, and to try to figure out, “Can we support those students?” He has also sought to determine whether some could be moved to other projects that still have funding, or be given teaching assistant positions, among other options.

    He’s not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao also has lost a grant worth about $750,000. But Tao said that he was more distressed by the freezing of a $25-million grant for UCLA’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The funding loss for the institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is “actually quite existential,” he said, because the grant is “needed to fund operations” there.

    Tao, who is the James and Carol Collins chair in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. “The abruptness — and basically the lack of due process in general — just compounds the damage,” said Tao. “We got no notice.”

    A luminary in his field, Tao conducts research that examines, in part, whether a group of numbers are random or structured. His work could lead to advances in cryptography that may eventually make online systems — such as those used for financial transactions — more secure.

    “It is important to do this kind of research — if we don’t, it’s possible that an adversary, for example, could actually discover these weaknesses that we are not looking for at all,” Tao said. “So you do need this extra theoretical confirmation that things that you think are working actually do work as intended, [and you need to] also explore the negative space of what doesn’t work.”

    Tao said he’s been heartened by donations that the mathematics institute has received from private donors in recent days — about $100,000 so far.

    “We are scrambling for short-term funding because we need to just keep the lights on for the next few months,” said Tao.

    Rafael Jaime, president of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers within the University of California — including about 8,000 at UCLA — said he was not aware of any workers who haven’t been paid so far, but that the issue could come to a head at the end of August.

    He said that the UC system “should do everything that it can to ensure that workers aren’t left without pay.”

    What comes next?

    A major stressor for academics: the uncertainty.

    Some researchers whose grants were suspended said they have not received much guidance from UCLA on a path forward. Some of that anxiety was vented on Zoom calls last week, including a UCLA-wide call attended by about 3,000 faculty members.

    UCLA administrators said they are exploring stopgap options, including potential emergency “bridge” funding to grantees to pay researchers or keep up labs such as those that use rodents as subjects.

    Some UCLA academics worried about a brain drain. Di Carlo said that undergraduate students he advises have begun asking for his advice on relocating to universities abroad for graduate school.

    “This has been the first time that I’ve seen undergraduate students that have asked about foreign universities for their graduate studies,” he said. “I hear, ‘What about Switzerland? … What about University of Tokyo?’ This assault on science is making the students think that this is not the place for them.”

    But arguably researchers’ most pressing concern is continuing their work.

    Campbell explained that she has personally been affected by pancreatic cancer — she lost someone close to her to it. She and her peers do the research “for the families” who’ve also been touched by the disease.

    “That the work that’s already in progress has the chance of being stopped in some way is really disappointing,” she said. “Not just for me, but for all those patients I could potentially help.”

    Daniel Miller, Jaweed Kaleem

    Source link

  • State recalls vape many months after it was told of contamination

    State recalls vape many months after it was told of contamination

    SACRAMENTO — 

    California cannabis regulators on Tuesday issued the state’s first recall of a pesticide-tainted weed product following a Los Angeles Times investigation disclosing dangerous contamination in the state’s legal cannabis supplies.

    The product ordered pulled from sale is an “Orange Cookies”-flavored West Coast Cure vape cartridge produced in September. The state recall said the vape exceeded safety limits for a single chemical, the insecticide chlorfenapyr.

    The Department of Cannabis Control did not immediately disclose how many of the vapes remained on store shelves, but posted online a list of 169 locations throughout the state where the product had been sold. The product’s safety certificate came from a lab whose license has since been suspended. That lab, Verity Analytics, reported the batch consisted of nearly 5,000 vapes.

    It was among a dozen West Coast Cure batches manufactured in September — consisting of more than 62,000 vapes in assorted flavors — that private lab Infinite Chemical Analysis tested last fall and reported to state regulators as containing pesticides that exceeded state limits. All had been certified as safe by other labs.

    Infinite reported the Orange Cookies batch in a complaint to the state in November. In addition to chlorfenapyr, the lab identified two additional chemicals in that batch: paclobutrazol, a growth hormone not allowed at any level, and trifloxystrobin, which showed up at four times what California deems safe.

    State regulators would not say why they did not flag the product for the additional chemicals. The state also did not immediately respond to questions about why it took seven months to recall a product reported for safety concerns.

    “It’s a symbolic recall,” said Elliot Lewis, owner of the 27-store Catalyst dispensary chain. Twenty-three of his stores carried the recalled vape. They sold out months ago, he said.

    Lewis posted news of the recall on social media, provoking heated comments that left him flustered.

    “Getting slammed,” he said. “First time I can remember going home unplanned [in the] middle of the day.”

    The owner of another large dispensary chain said its stores had two of the products still in inventory but pulled them from shelves last week after their inclusion in an investigation by The Times, in conjunction with industry newsletter WeedWeek, that found alarming levels of pesticide contamination in cannabis products available to consumers, including some of the most popular brands.

    That June 14 report showed 25 out of 42 products bought from licensed stores exceeded either state safety limits or federal tobacco standards. The results mirrored 85 contamination complaints filed with California regulators since October by Infinite and another whistleblower, Anresco Laboratories.

    Before Tuesday, regulators had issued pesticide-related recalls for only two of the products that were the subject of the complaints.

    West Coast Cure is California’s fourth-top-selling cannabis brand. Its parent company, Shield Management Group, this year was fined $3.2 million by California regulators after a surprise inspection found it had failed to guard against product tampering, such as storing cannabis products in parking lot containers without video surveillance. The company also could not produce state-required footage proving products had not been tampered with before lab testing or distribution.

    West Coast Cure co-founder Logan Wasserman did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the recall.

    A statement to The Times on Tuesday by a public relations firm on behalf of the company said: “We have passing test results from state licensed labs for every product we put on the market. Our dedication to excellence and doing what’s right for our customers and our community is at the core of our values. We remain steadfast in our mission to provide fully tested, exceptional products and uphold the trust placed in us.”

    In federal court Monday, Infinite and Anresco filed a lawsuit against 13 independent labs that test cannabis products for the weed industry, accusing them of manipulating test results in order to win business, while putting consumer health at risk. The civil suit cites product safety certificates issued by some of the labs for products later found to be contaminated, as well as Department of Cannabis Control findings cited in disciplinary reports.

    Infinite also provided the testing behind a proposed class-action lawsuit filed June 14 in Orange County Superior Court against West Coast Cure, seeking redress for 23 vape flavors alleged to be contaminated with pesticides, including the Orange Cookies product recalled Tuesday.

    “Whereas competition used to be healthy and revolved around quality, turnaround time and customer service, it has now devolved into a free-for-all, in which brands and laboratories agree, jointly, to ignore ‘safety fails’ … in an effort to hide the presence of dangerous chemicals, which otherwise would prevent the sale of these tainted goods,” the consumer complaint alleges.

    Both cases were handled by Arkansas class-action attorney David Slade, whose litigation cases include filings against Apple, Best Buy stores, Target and Hobby Lobby.

    Other weed industry leaders called for a crackdown on alleged “persistent testing fraud” by the private labs California relies upon to screen cannabis for harmful substances.

    “The state’s continued failure to enforce against those who fail to comply — both inside and outside of the regulated market — has put the credibility of the entire adult-use market in peril, and now threatens the very consumers we aim to serve,” the California Cannabis Industry Assn. said in response to the report by The Times and WeedWeek.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office voiced confidence in his cannabis agency’s handling of contamination issues, saying it “supports DCC in developing innovative policies and effective implementation that advances and facilitates a well-regulated, legal, and safe market that benefits all Californians.”

    California has struggled since creation of the recreational cannabis market in 2018 to set up a state lab to enforce limits on pesticides in weed products.

    In 2021, the cannabis agency signed an $11-million, five-year contract with UC San Diego’s cannabis research program to create a state lab “in order to confirm that licensed testing laboratories are accurately and reliably testing cannabis goods,” budget filings and contract records show. Those documents describe the lab as intended to run tests for regulators with results available within five days.

    Four years and $9 million in payments later, the San Diego lab is not certified to check pesticide levels, its accreditation record shows.

    With consolidation of cannabis-related regulation under a single agency in 2021, the Department of Cannabis Control took over a cannabis lab in Richmond that had been run by the Department of Public Health. In the ensuing years, that lab has gained accreditation to test for potency levels and microbial contamination, but is not certified to measure pesticides.

    In the interim, cannabis regulators are constrained by the limitations of other state labs that have sometimes agreed to test weed. The Agriculture Department lab, for instance, tested cannabis flower to identify the presence of smuggled Chinese-label pesticides. But the lab cannot assess the safety of vaping oils, in which contamination problems appeared greatest.

    With state safety certificates called into question, one of California’s largest weed retailers, Catalyst, announced it would start its own shelf testing program. Lewis, its owner, voiced mixed feelings about what consumers would make of that. He said that he remained convinced that products sold on the illicit market are worse, and that lessening public confidence in the legal market would hurt brands producing clean products.

    In an email, he said vape sales have dropped since the June 14 article. “I suspect more folks now see no benefit of shopping for legal products,” he wrote. “The customer’s thought process is, ‘It’s all dirty.’”

    It is not good timing for a loss of faith in the legal market. Sales of licensed products have been in slipping in California since peaking in 2021 at $5.3 billion, according to monthly sales reports posted by the Department of Cannabis Control. The most recent data show reported sales of $4.9 billion for 2023.

    The desire to convince California residents and tourists to purchase their cannabis in licensed and taxed shops has driven state marketing and data collection campaigns since 2020, including the $5-million “Real CA Cannabis” campaign that kicked off in February, featuring social media messages on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit targeted at key demographics.

    “[F]or public health purposes, the state has an interest in seeing consumer behavior shift more swiftly to the legal and regulated market,” the cannabis control agency wrote in a 2022 budget request, citing deaths and injuries two years prior from dangerous substances in cannabis and tobacco vaping products.

    In California alone, some 250 people were hospitalized and five died when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019 linked a rise in lung-related injuries to vaping products, the cannabis agency wrote in its budget request.

    Paige St. John

    Source link

  • Head of illicit lab that sparked conspiracy theories arrested, accused of misbranding medical tests

    Head of illicit lab that sparked conspiracy theories arrested, accused of misbranding medical tests

    The head of an illegal Fresno County medical testing lab whose underground setup fueled wild conspiracy theories was arrested Thursday, federal prosecutors announced.

    Jia Bei Zhu, who went by a number of aliases, was busted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for running the Universal Meditech Inc. lab that manufactured and sold hundreds of thousands of COVID-19, HIV and pregnancy test kits from late 2020 to March 2023 without the required authorizations, according to federal agents.

    Zhu’s lab in Reedley first raised eyebrows in 2022, when a local code enforcement officer discovered it was stocked with vials of blood, jars of urine and about 1,000 white mice living in sullied containers.

    Officials investigated, shut down the lab and ordered the mice euthanized. But after a local news story suggested the mice were bred to carry COVID-19, baseless rumors started flying online that the lab was connected to the Chinese government and could be part of preparations for a biological attack.

    Refrigerators and other equipment inside a now-shuttered medical lab that officials say was operating illegally.

    (Courtesy of city of Reedley / Associated Press)

    But the explanation was more benign.

    The mice were found not to carry COVID-19. They were actually bred to grow the COVID-19 antibody cells used for test kits.

    But authorities allege that the lab was skirting FDA laws and that Zhu, 62, made false statements during the investigation, resulting in him being charged with lying to a federal agent.

    “The disarray at the Reedley lab led to the glare of publicity [Zhu] was trying to avoid, and the ensuing investigation unraveled his efforts to circumvent the requirements that are designed to ensure that medical devices are safe and effective,” said Phillip Talbert, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California.

    The Reedley lab was not the first time Zhu’s companies courted trouble.

    In 2016, he was the owner of a Canadian company, IND Diagnostic Inc., that was ordered to pay $300 million “for misappropriating technology related to the separation of sex chromosomes from bull semen,” according to American federal agents.

    Just before his arrest, Zhu was preparing to sue Fresno County for shutting down his lab, the Fresno Bee reported.

    The lab head was reportedly seeking $50 million — alleging the county had wrongly seized medical equipment, including freezers and refrigerators stocked with biological goods.

    Noah Goldberg

    Source link

  • Pace® Aerobiology Receives AIHA EMLAP Accreditation for Washington State Laboratory

    Pace® Aerobiology Receives AIHA EMLAP Accreditation for Washington State Laboratory

    Company adds bacteria, E. coli, Legionella, and other microbiology testing and analysis capabilities to support the Northwest United States

    Press Release
    –

    Feb 8, 2023 09:00 EST


    MINNEAPOLIS, February 8, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Aerobiology, part of the Pace® Analytical Services laboratory network, today announced that its Seattle, Washington, laboratory has achieved accreditation from the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) for its Environmental Microbiology Laboratory Accreditation Program (EMLAP).

    The mission of the AIHA is to establish high standards for laboratories to produce quality data for making decisions that impact public health, the environment, and natural resources. The association manages several accreditation programs, including EMLAP, which was developed specifically for microbiology labs providing microbiology testing of air, fluids, and bulk samples collected from various sources including schools, hospitals, and work environments.

    “Pace® is committed to meeting the needs of our customers for high-quality, cost-effective analytical services. This accreditation ensures our customers meet their regulatory requirements on their important projects,” notes Greg Whitman, president of Pace® Analytical Services.

    As a result of this achievement, the Pace® Aerobiology Seattle lab may now analyze culture samples for bacteria, fungi, and non-viable analysis of spore trap and tape/wipe direct samples. These analyses include the detection of Legionella, Mycobacteria, and Pseudomonas. This lab also performs screen tests on sewage to identify E. coli and fecal coliforms. The company’s deep expertise in bacterial and fungal testing in environmental and clinical settings is backed by over 25 years of industry experience. Within the Pace® nationwide network of over 100 laboratories and service centers, 11 are Pace® Aerobiology locations offering microbiology testing and analysis capabilities.

    Pace® is a portfolio company of Leonard Green & Partners and Los Angeles-based Aurora Capital Partners.

    About Pace® Aerobiology

    For more than 25 years, Pace® Aerobiology has provided microbial indoor air quality and related laboratory services. As part of the Pace® nationwide network of labs and service centers, the business now provides microbiology services for environmental and clinical settings through 11 locations. Pace® Aerobiology labs are accredited by the Environmental Microbiology Laboratory Accreditation Program (EMLAP), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ELITE Program, the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP), and the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). More at Aerobiology.net.

    About Pace®

    Pace® makes the world a safer, healthier place. For decades, Pace® people have been committed to advancing the science of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in our Life Sciences laboratories and supporting businesses, industries, consulting firms, government agencies, and more through our Analytical Services laboratories. Pace® offers local-level service backed by a national laboratory network. For customers with in-house labs, Pace® provides a range of professional services to keep their operations moving forward. Pace® people work in partnership with customers by providing the service, science, and the data they need to make critical decisions that benefit us all. More at PaceLabs.com.

    Source: Pace Analytical

    Source link