Celebrating 10 Years

Dr Maurice Owen

by Dr Maurice Owen, Scientific Director

Canterbury Scientific Ltd started in the late 1970s making HbA2 standards for use in β-thalassaemia diagnosis and providing these to hospital and medical laboratories in New Zealand and Australia. These were made for CSL at Canterbury Health Laboratories by Dr Maurice Owen, Dr David Williamson and Prof Steve Brennan following the procedures developed by Prof Robin Carrell in Cambridge UK, prior to his return to Christchurch. During the 1980s the range of products increased with the addition of a lyophilized HbF/A2 control and a haemoglobin stability kitset. The trilevel HbA2 standards were manufactured as both a liquid stable and lyophilized product.

In 1991 the first HbA1c control was produced. This had a number of unique features including making the level 2 or abnormal control by in vitro glycation of non-diabetic blood. As interest and sales of this product grew it became necessary to move the production of the products from Canterbury Health Laboratories to a dedicated facility. This decision was made with the need to meet the strict regulatory requirements for manufacturing products demanded by customers.

In September 2002 Dr Owen resigned as section head of the Molecular Pathology Laboratory at Canterbury Health Labs and with Bryce Hawkins (Managing Director) setup the Canterbury Scientific facility in nearby 14 Pope Street Riccarton, Christchurch. They were joined a month or two later by Richard Fowler (Quality and Regulatory Control) and Fiona Gurevin (Financial Controller). Over those next 8 years a number of new products were developed; notably the liquid stable HbA1c controls which have become CSL’s most sought after product.

In 2010 Bryce retired and another old colleague from the Christchurch School of Medicine days, Dr Neil Pattinson took over as CEO. As we outgrew our premises in Pope Street we designed and moved into state-of-the art purpose built manufacturing, analytical and research laboratories a short distance away in Whiteleigh Avenue. This gave more than three times the floor area and future-proofed growth for the company.

So 2012 is 10 years since CSL moved to setup at a dedicated facility. CSL continues to grow and is now firmly looking to the future by establishing key collaborative projects for new bio markers with the University of Canterbury, University of Otago (Christchurch), Canterbury Health Laboratories and Cambridge and Shanghai Universities.

Published on Monday, April 16th, 2012, under Blog