Life Science Group Ltd blog

Case Study: Somus x LSG

Life Science Group — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:28:25 GMT

Antibody Development and Lateral Flow Assay Support for Somnus

Introduction

Somnus Scientific first approached Life Science Group (LSG) in July 2022 to develop a rabbit polyclonal antibody to propofol, with the longer-term objective of supporting development of a rapid diagnostic test. The programme subsequently progressed to mouse monoclonal antibody generation in March 2024. Four monoclonal antibodies were identified for lateral flow evaluation and the programme later included hybridoma sequencing and recombinant antibody expression.

The overall aim was to support the translation of Somnus's laboratory-based propofol immunoassay into a rapid point-of-care lateral flow test for use with clinically relevant samples.

The Challenge: Why the Customer Came to Us

Developing an antibody is only part of the challenge. For this programme, the customer had promising reagents and evidence of antibody performance in ELISA but needed specialist support to translate that early-stage work into a robust lateral flow assay with a secure route to future reagent supply.

Propofol presented a particularly demanding target. As a small molecule, it required a competitive rather than conventional sandwich assay format, making antigen presentation and assay architecture critical to performance. Somnus needed a partner with the breadth of lateral flow development expertise to understand how antibody characteristics, conjugation chemistry, membrane behaviour and assay conditions interacted and to systematically optimise them as a complete system.

The programme also identified a potential risk to future manufacture. During scale-up of the lead GH5 hybridoma, revival of cryopreserved cells initially resulted in poor viability and inconsistent antibody production. For the customer, this created a potential dependency on an unreliable supply of a critical assay component. Addressing these required capabilities extending beyond lateral flow development into antibody production and reagent supply, with the objective of establishing a robust and reproducible route to future manufacture.

By bringing antibody expertise, conjugation chemistry and lateral flow development together within a single programme, we were able to address both the immediate assay-development challenges and the longer-term risks associated with reagent supply. For the customer, this provided a route from promising laboratory reagents towards a reproducible, scalable assay platform without having to build and coordinate these specialist capabilities internally.

Life Science Group's Role

LSG supported Somnus across the antibody and diagnostic development pathway, providing specialist antibody expertise and continuity as the programme progressed from antibody generation into diagnostic development. This support included custom polyclonal and mouse monoclonal antibody development and screening, selection of antibodies for diagnostic evaluation and development of a competitive lateral flow proof-of-concept assay in collaboration with Creonate Manufacturing and specialist conjugation partners.

To translate promising antibody performance into a viable lateral flow format, LSG and Creonate evaluated antibody conjugation to colloidal gold through antibody loading, buffer optimisations, nitrocellulose membrane comparisons incorporating novel propofol capture formats and dry-test configurations. By connecting antibody expertise with downstream assay development, the team helped address the challenges of translating antibody performance into the intended diagnostic format, progressing the programme through to testing with propofol-spiked human serum.

LSG also helped de-risk future antibody supply by maintaining the original GH5 hybridoma, sequencing the selected antibody and evaluating recombinant expression alongside conventional hybridoma-derived production. This provided Somnus with alternative routes to a critical assay reagent, supporting continuity of supply and greater flexibility for future scale-up and commercialisation.

Key Outcomes and Achievements

The programme successfully generated a panel of anti-propofol monoclonal antibodies and identified GH5 as the lead candidate for continued lateral flow development.

When the original BSA-propofol approach did not provide sufficient lateral flow performance, the team investigated alternative assay architectures. Evaluation of a biotin-propofol/poly-streptavidin capture system improved presentation of the small-molecule target and enabled further optimisation of the assay. Through iterative testing, the work progressed into a dry-test format and evaluation with propofol-spiked pooled human serum, establishing proof of concept for the competitive lateral flow approach.

The project also established an alternative route to future antibody supply through recombinant expression. ELISA comparison showed that recombinant GH5 retained strong binding to propofol and, under the conditions tested, generated higher absorbance values than the previously purified GH5 antibody across the concentrations examined.

The original hybridoma was also successfully recovered following culture optimisation, expanded and banked, providing complementary hybridoma and recombinant production routes, allowing Somnus flexibility in the routes they follow and opportunities to explore increased sensitivity.

Summary: LSG Products and Solutions

The Somnus project demonstrates LSG's ability to support a diagnostic programme from early antibody discovery through to assay feasibility and future manufacturing readiness. Services delivered across the programme included

Work completed to date has included:

Custom rabbit polyclonal antibody development
Mouse monoclonal antibody development and screening
Hybridoma culture, recovery and cell banking
Antibody sequencing
Recombinant antibody expression
Antibody purification and characterisation
Colloidal-gold conjugation evaluation
Lateral flow feasibility and optimisation support.
Supply of propofol-positive human serum and blood samples

The collaboration provides Somnus with both a lead anti-propofol antibody and a development pathway towards a sequence-defined, reproducible antibody supply for continued point-of-care test development. Somnus is now focused on further optimisation of the lateral flow format and progression towards increasingly representative prototypes and clinical evaluation.

Email sales@lifesciencegroup.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Case Study: University Hospital Southhampton x LSG

Life Science Group — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:31:32 GMT

Custom reagent manufacture for University Hospital Southampton

Introduction

Life Science Group partnered with the Virology Department at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust to develop and manufacture a custom reagent used across their workflows.

The project focused on producing an 8M guanidine hydrochloride solution. The aim was to create a reliable, ready-to-use reagent that could support ongoing virology testing while reducing dependence on existing suppliers.

The Challenge: Why the Customer Came to Us

The customer’s existing reagent supply chain had become unreliable, with manufacturing delays and poor availability creating operational risk.

As the customer explained:

“The manufacturing issues are still ongoing with our existing supplier, so this will likely be required as soon as it arrives”.

They were looking to improve supply, but needed confidence that the product could be manufactured, validated, supplied at suitable volumes, and adapted around realistic usage patterns.

Key challenges included:

Poor availability from the incumbent supplier.
A need for a custom formulation and fill volume.
Specific container requirements due to solvent and chaotrope use.
Validation requirements before wider workflow adoption.
Changing volume forecasts and the need for flexible batch planning.
Shelf-life considerations linked to ordering frequency and stock usage.

Life Science Group's Role

Life Science Group worked closely with the customer to move from enquiry to manufacture, supporting them through specification, quotation, production planning, documentation, and release.

Our role included:

Reviewing the customer’s custom product requirements.
Building a quotation around forecasted usage and realistic batch sizes.
Revising pricing when the customer’s forecast changed.
Advising on batch frequency, shelf life, and supply planning.
Preparing and agreeing the product specification before manufacture.
Confirming release expectations, including pH and relevant quality considerations.
Manufacturing the custom reagent and dispatching it for customer validation.
Maintaining clear communication throughout the process.

The project required a collaborative approach, with both teams working through formulation, packaging, release criteria, validation needs, and future supply planning.

Key Outcomes and Achievements

The first manufactured batch was successfully produced and dispatched for customer validation.

Feedback from the customer was overwhelmingly positive:

“We were testing your reagent with the majority of our workload – and it is working perfectly, so it will be a quality improvement for our services.”

Key outcomes included:

- - Successful manufacture of a custom guanidine hydrochloride reagent.
  - A more secure alternative to an unreliable incumbent supply route.
  - Product supplied for validation within the customer’s workflow.
  - Flexible pricing and batch planning based on revised usage data.
  - Progression toward catalogue addition and future repeat supply.
  - Discussion of two further potential custom products for manufacture by LSG.

Summary: LSG Products and Solutions

This project demonstrates Life Science Group’s ability to support customers with custom liquid manufacture where standard catalogue products or incumbent suppliers cannot meet operational needs.

For laboratories, diagnostics teams, and life science organisations, LSG can support with:

Custom buffers and reagents.
Specialist liquid manufacture.
Small and medium batch production.
Customer-specific fill volumes and packaging formats.
Specification development and documentation.
Flexible batch planning aligned to usage and shelf life.
UK-based manufacture with responsive technical and commercial support.

Where supply chain reliability matters, LSG helps customers move from uncertainty to a more controlled, collaborative, and dependable manufacturing solution.

Email sales@lifesciencegroup.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Case Study: Medtrade x LSG

Life Science Group — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:36:47 GMT

Collection time to receipt of material for Medtrade/Celox Products LTD

Introduction

We were approached by our customer as they faced a challenge of receiving extremely freshly collected whole blood samples for wound absorbent material studies. The only option they had available to them involved importing the material from the USA. Due to the collection and shipping timelines this meant that the whole blood could be more than 7 days old from collection to receipt. The study required extremely fresh whole blood.

The Challenge: Why the Customer Came to Us

Given the age of the blood upon arrival, this wasn’t giving the customer accurate clinical information on how their products would behave with fresh whole blood. The blood cells were deteriorating during transit which was having an impact on their scientific outcomes.

Life Science Group's Role

LSG have access to freshly collected whole blood samples from a range of agricultural donors and can offer same day or next day deliveries. LSG have a degree of flexibility within the collection times of whole blood allowing for coverage on urgent requests. LSG can offer collection from donor to lab bench with a time frame of less than 24 hours.

Key Outcomes and Achievements

Reduced collection-to-receipt time from 7+ days to less than 24 hours, giving Medtrade/Celox access to significantly fresher whole blood.
Enabled same-day or next-day delivery of freshly collected agricultural whole blood samples.
Improved clinical relevance of product testing by allowing wound absorbent materials to be assessed against blood that more closely reflects fresh physiological conditions.
Reduced the impact of blood-cell deterioration associated with extended international transport and storage.
Provided a responsive UK-based supply route, removing reliance on imported material from the USA.
Introduced greater flexibility around collection timing, allowing LSG to support urgent or short-notice study requirements.
Created a donor-to-laboratory workflow capable of delivering material within 24 hours, supporting more reliable and representative scientific outcomes.

Aditionally, LSG developed a strong working relationship with all personnel at Medtrade/Celox which will see the parties expand on their work together.

“Extremely happy with the level of service and quality of goods received. Actively moving to validate LSG as the primary supplier of blood products for third-party test houses we contract routine work out for :-) “

Summary: LSG Products and Solutions

For Medtrade/Celox, LSG provided a reliable UK-based route to freshly collected whole blood, reducing collection-to-receipt time to less than 24 hours and removing reliance on slower international supply.

More broadly, LSG supports research, diagnostic and product development programmes with a flexible biospecimen sourcing service, including:

Fresh whole blood and other animal-derived biospecimens
Human biospecimens from healthy and disease-state donors
Matched sample sets and donor recall
Prospective collections against defined study protocols
Plasma, serum, PBMCs, tissues and other sample types
Access to associated donor and clinical information where available
Flexible collection schedules and rapid turnaround for time-sensitive studies

Our focus is on helping customers access the right biological material, in the right condition, with the provenance, consistency and collection parameters required for meaningful scientific work.

Email sales@lifesciencegroup.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Case Study: Multus x LSG

Life Science Group — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:03:46 GMT

Multus Multus optimises the formulation.

LSG helps make it ready for supply.

Background

For biomanufacturing companies producing cellular-based products, cell culture media is a key commercial consideration. Animal component-free media is often a prerequisite for scale-up, and products high-quality products require reproducible and manufacturable media formulations. However, the gap between bench-scale media formulations and commercial-scale media can be significant. Without an established manufacturing partner relationship, that transition can be more costly and challenging than anticipated.

For most early-stage biotech companies, building GMP-aligned media manufacturing capability in-house is not viable. The alternative is identifying and onboarding a media manufacturing partner which introduces its own complexity: how to transfer formulation know-how, define quality requirements for a novel ingredient set, and manage the transition from research volumes to production volumes.

This case study describes how Multus Biotechnology and Life Science Group (LSG) addressed this challenge together, combining Multus' formulation expertise and their MediOP™ platform with LSG's manufacturing infrastructure, documentation capabilities, and quality systems.

Multus Biotechnology Ltd. - Media Optimisation

Multus Biotechnology develops optimised media formulations for the biomanufacturing sector across food, materials, and medicines. This is achieved via their proprietary MediOP™ platform that integrates robotic liquid handling for experimental throughput, machine learning-led live cell imaging to track media performance, and AI-driven bayesian optimisation to converge on high performing media formulations. MediOP™ screens thousands of formulation candidates in months, instead of years. MediOP™ produces a quantified, ranked understanding of which ingredients drive biological performance in media, developing high-performing media formulations across various applications.

The formulation developed in this case study, named PhytoFuel, is an animal component-free serum replacement designed for the proliferation of porcine adipocyte derived stem cells (ADSCs). PhytoFuel was optimised on the MediOP™ platform, and validated across three cell passages, demonstrating enhanced performance compared to FBS-containing control media.

Following internal development of the formulation, Multus approached Life Science Group (LSG) for the production of validation batches for further external testing of the formulation via select partners.

Life Science Group (LSG) - Manufacturing, Quality and Release

Life Science Group (LSG) is a UK-based contract manufacturer specialising in custom media, reagents, and biological solutions for life science applications. LSG operates GMP-aligned quality-managed facilities with ISO 9001 and 13485 certification and provides integrated services spanning process documentation, batch manufacture, QC retention, and cold-chain storage and fulfilment. They also maintain a network of release testing partners for validated and flexible final product testing.

LSG's experience with complex, multi-component biological formulations, including animal-component-free and specialised ingredient requirements, made them a wellsuited partner for a novel serum-free formulation. They can support the production of low-volume validation batches under 10 L, as well as commercial-scale manufacturing up to 2,000 L, all in-line with their GMP-aligned quality processes.

Technology transfer and manufacturing

This initial project began with the technical transfer of Multus’ formulation documentation to LSG, in the form of specification sheets, mixing sheets, and ingredient quality and safety documentation to define the manufacturing process and release testing requirements.

LSG collaborated with Multus to intake white-labelled ingredients (allowing Multus to retain key formulation IP) and integrate them into LSG’s GMP-aligned manufacturing quality infrastructure.

The manufacturing validation run was defined as an initial 3L batch (30 × 100mL units), sized to support early-stage trials while generating the process data needed for future scale-up.

Key aspects of the technology transfer included:

Process transfer: Translating Multus’ formulation specification into an LSGmanaged manufacturing process, with documentation based on LSG’s GMPaligned quality system.
Ingredient procurement: Multus sourced (white-labelled) ingredients were transferred to LSG ahead of manufacturing. LSG can also support ingredient procurement when needed.
QC and batch release alignment: Establishing shared expectations around QC retention, release testing (endotoxin, mycoplasma, sterility), and certification standards.
Scale-up pathway: Establishing the groundwork for a pricing and process model that captures cost efficiencies at scale, providing a commercial trajectory from validation volumes to production volumes.
Integrated storage and fulfilment: Storage of the final media products was provided by LSG, with direct customer fulfilment and global shipping, removing the need for additional Multus’ storage or cold-chain logistics.

For Multus, this project demonstrated that formulations developed on the MediOP™ platform can be successfully transferred to LSG and produced to defined quality standards for media validation batches intended for initial customer assessment.

For LSG, the engagement demonstrated their capability to take on novel, complex formulations from early-stage biotech companies and manage the process transfer, documentation, and quality alignment required to make outsourced manufacture viable from the early stages of product development.

Building an external manufacturing partnership

This collaboration illustrates a manufacturing model that is increasingly necessary for biomanufacturing, where formulation design and manufacturing expertise are held by different organisations and value is created by combining them effectively. For Multus, building in-house GMP-aligned manufacturing and the associated documentation, quality systems and release infrastructure would pull resources from core competencies in media optimisation and formulation design. Meanwhile, manufacturing partnerships are expanding beyond fee-for-service agreements, with stronger alignment between Biotech and CDMOs to support shared growth and reduce technical and operational risk amidst increasingly volatile supply chains.

Using this model, Multus focus on what the MediOP™ platform is designed to do: optimise media for specified cell lines and applications, converging on high-performing, cost effective formulations, with ingredient sets selected for manufacturability. Sequentially, LSG focus on translating these formulations to physical products via their manufacturing infrastructure and quality systems, managing documentation and traceability. This also means formulations validated at the single litre scale can be scaled through the same partner without requiring a lengthy re-qualification process.

Critically, the model is formulation agnostic. PhytoFuel was used to develop the manufacturing framework, with the same IP protections, quality standards, and partner relationship available for any optimised media formulations. For biomanufacturing companies working with Multus on media development, this answers the question of “once my formulation is optimised, how can I repeatably and reliably acquire quality product?”.

Collectively, this model delivers for Multus’ customers by ensuring both formulation quality and supply reliability, without either partner needing to build capacity outside their core competence. Case Study Multus Multus optimises the formulation. LSG helps make it ready for supply.

Outcomes

Specific project outcomes
- Defined validation batch (3L, 30 × 100mL units)
- Structured documentation for process transfer
- Alignment on testing, QC retention, and manufacturing expectations
- Clear pricing model showing cost efficiencies at scale o Exploration of integrated manufacturing + storage + fulfilment model
- Foundation for ongoing outsourced manufacturing as volumes increase
Commercially relevant outcomes
- Establishment of a GMP-aligned manufacturing partnership that enables Multus to supply optimised media through LSG’s manufacturing and quality infrastructure, supporting traceability, reproducibility, and a route to production scale-up.
- Demonstration of the manufacturability of MediOP™ designed media formulations.
- Showcase of LSG’s flexibility in manufacturing of multi-component formulations at the validation scale, with a path to formulation scale-up (up to 2,000 litres)

www.lifesciencegroup.co.uk https://www.multus.bio/

salesdist@lifesciencegroup.co.uk Julian.Bisten@multus.bio