Interview with Dr. Ann Terry, MAX IV

MAX IV Laboratory is a Swedish national synchrotron laboratory that has operated as a user facility since 2016. MAX IV offers access to 16 beamlines that provide modern X-ray spectroscopy, scattering/diffraction, and imaging techniques to contribute to solving scientific questions in a wide range of areas. The beamlines are open to academia, research institutes, industry, and government agencies worldwide through the user access programmes.

Why is NextBioForm important for MAX IV?

"NextBioForm has been an important way for MAX IV to introduce scattering techniques to the scientists in pharmaceutical industry, and specifically in formulation of biologics.  The use of x-rays for determining protein structure is more well-known.

NextBioForm has also provided the financial support, both to MAX IV and to other partners, to engage several post docs with the right skills ant the right time to develop and deliver on specfic tasks that are necessary to make CoSAXS useful and accessible for studies of biologics formulations. This has been accomplished by developing sample environments, automated sample handling systems and the software necessary to perform the experiments and to handle the massive amounts of data that is produced during the experiments.

The involvement of scientists within the NextBioForm partner network has also helped MAX IV in setting the requirements for the beamline and to understand what is needed in service from the beamline to enable less experienced users to perform successful experiments.

NextBioForm has also been a test arena to explore feasibility of different types of experiments in the company of partner scientists. It is very valuable for us to be able to test new methodologies and equipment with friendly users."

What do you do in NextBioForm?

"We have focused on the development of the CoSAXS beamline to support the biologics industry and formulation research, Further, we support the different research projects in designing and conducting experiments, as well as in data evaluation. An important part of this is education of external scientists to evaluate and understand data and results. We also help partners in developing beamline applications."

Who benefits from the research and development?

"We help to raise awareness and introduce synchrotron techniques to the industry. These techniques are very powerful, in particular when used alongside other characterization methods. NextBioForm helps to lower the threshold for considering the use of advanced techniques in development and research in industry."

What’s next for MAX IV?

"We have now reached our targeted base-line capability at CoSAXS, and we want to further develop sample environments for in operanod measurements. We also want to improve the user interface to make it easier for non-experts to get the most out of CoSAXS.  In this context, it is very valuable to work closely with the users."