Jamjoom Pharma installs ProtoCOL

Synbiosis, a UK manufacturer of automated microbiological systems, has installed a ProtoCOL automated zone sizing and colony counting system at Jamjoom Pharma, Saudi Arabia’s leading pharmaceutical company, to assess rapidly and accurately the quality of its antibiotic, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products.

Microbiologists in Jamjoom’s quality control department are using ProtoCOL to look for and count colonies of potential contaminants, including E.coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas and air borne fungi. This allows them continuously to monitor that their aseptic manufacturing facility is operating safely under sterile conditions. They are also using the system to measure inhibition zones on antibiotic susceptibility testing plates.

Dr Aamer Khatri, senior QC manager at Jamjoom Pharma, said: ‘We are manufacturing to GMP standards and have to check between 50–100 plates a day. This used to involve a lot of tedious plate assessments and manual zone measuring, which was very time consuming. To help speed this process up, we assessed several different automated colony counting systems.’

Khatri said the firm chose the ProtoCOL because it is quick and easy to obtain and store an image of each plate and the count or measurement data together.