King's College London to invest in state-of-the-art equipment for structural biology

The Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King's College London have confirmed their investment in an Oxford Diffraction PX Scanner and an Xcalibur Nova system.

The Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London has today confirmed a major investment in state-of-the-art equipment for their Structural Biology Laboratory. Infrastructure support for a new X-ray crystallography facility following three new appointments in structural biology, together with a major grant from the Wellcome Trust for robotic crystallisation and imaging equipment, have been used to purchase both the unique PX Scanner plus an Xcalibur Nova system from Oxford Diffraction Limited. The Randall Division’s Structural Biology Laboratory has agreed to become an important reference site for Oxford Diffraction to showcase this combination of instruments.

The PX Scanner is the first commercial product to offer combined automated optical inspection with in-situ X-ray diffraction of putative crystals in multi-well plates. An entirely novel product, the PX Scanner was launched in August 2006. The Xcalibur Nova is an X-ray diffractometer for protein crystallography incorporating the 165 mm Onyx CCD detector and the microfocus Nova X-ray source. Xcalibur Nova is the established market leader in this class of instruments.

Professor Brian Sutton from King’s College explained the reason for the selection of Oxford Diffraction equipment: “We were extremely impressed with the quality of the trial data that we collected on the Xcalibur Nova system, and are excited about the contribution that the PX Scanner will make to speeding up the process of obtaining crystals suitable for protein structure analysis. My research is aimed at developing inhibitors of IgE antibody interactions for the treatment of allergy and asthma, and this will involve many crystallisation trials and structure determinations of IgE-inhibitor complexes.  Rapid screening for crystals that diffract to high resolution will be essential.  Since the rate limiting step in most protein crystallographic studies is producing suitably ordered crystals, the PX Scanner, which will enable us to assess crystals without removing them from the crystallisation plate, will accelerate all our research at King’s, such as our work on protein-DNA interactions, antibiotic resistance enzymes, and proteins implicated in neurodegenerative disease”.

Dr. Paul Loeffen, CEO of Oxford Diffraction, commented “We are all delighted that the Randall Division has chosen to invest in our equipment. This is a clear demonstration of the power of the combination of our in-situ X-ray screening system, PX Scanner, alongside our X-ray diffractometer, Xcalibur Nova. We look forward to working closely with King’s College over the coming years.”