Company Profile
Canterbury Scientific Ltd was founded over 20 years ago to provide a means of disseminating, initially throughout Australasia, standards and controls for a number of haematology tests. At that time a number of electrophoretic and chromatographic procedures were so inaccurate as to make the diagnostic decisions unreliable and often meaningless.
A number of techniques were developed to isolate and stabilize the haemoglobin components, which were blended to strategic target values. The final product was supplied either freeze dried or as a ready-to-use solution. Our first products were a combined HbF/HbA2 control and a trilevel HbA2 standards which were used to improve the diagnosis of β-thalassaemia.
Our first HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin) control was produced some 10 years ago to provide a quality control program for the diverse procedures used to measure the analyte. A feature of this product is the enhanced stability of the freeze dried control which has a shelf life of 3 years at 4°C, and a working life of 3 months at 4°C when reconstituted. A further feature is that the abnormal diabetic level control is produced from normal non-diabetic red cells by controlled glycation. In this way we are able to produce controls with levels up to as high as 20% HbA1c. It also avoids the real ethical issue of taking blood from diabetics with poor glycaemic control.
The technology that is now used to stabilize and standardize the haemoglobin fractions has been developed over the past 15 years, with a constant investment in R & D. Haemoglobin is an inherently unstable molecule that spontaneously transforms to alternative forms that render it invalid as an analytical standard. The know-how that has made Canterbury Scientific world experts in the field arose from long international experience. One of the founding directors, Professor Robin Carrell, is the acknowledged world expert on the stability of human haemoglobin and received his training in the MRC Abnormal Haemoglobin Unit in Cambridge England, initially as medical scientific officer and subsequently as Deputy Director to Professor Hermann Lehmann FRS.
Two other founding scientists of the Christchurch Haemoglobin Reference Laboratory, Dr Maurice Owen and Dr David Williamson each spent several years training and working with this unit in Cambridge. The expertise that they brought to Christchurch is the basis for the successful achievement of the stabilization of haemoglobin in a form suitable for transport, storage, freezing, thawing, refreezing and rethawing with the maintenance of precise and accurate electrophoretic and chromatographic integrity.
