NPL has a rapidly growing multi-disciplinary team pioneering metrology to support biotechnology, especially in healthcare where its impact is greatest.

The team has strong collaborations with industry and academia. Biotechnology has a developing need for accurate measurements fuelled by the increasing awareness of the need for comparability and traceability for product conformance, quality control and regulatory compliance.

Building on the diverse range of measurement techniques that are applicable to the Healthcare community, NPL has focussed its science into the following key areas:

• Biopharmaceutical protein structure-function relationships and process monitoring through the application of physicochemical techniques to support the biotechnology industry and influence regulatory organisations such as the ICH and the Pharmacopoeia.
  
  
• Metrology infrastructure for biological measurements including a wide range of physico-chemical techniques such as circular dichroism, surface plasmon resonance, ELISA and mass spectrometries.
  
  
• Development of standards for biodiagnostic and sensor measurements to support the EU In Vitro Diagnostic Device Directive (98/79/EC) for the detection of trace amounts of specific biological molecules in complex biological environments and sensors to monitor biological activity.
  
  
• Tissue Engineering, medical devices and biointerfaces between material surfaces and the biological environment.
  
  
• Single Molecule Imaging which represent the ultimate scientific challenge in terms of detection limits, handling and measurement of biological activity.
  
  
• Nanobiotechnology, including single molecule spectroscopy, electrophysiological measurements combined with SECM imaging of single ion channel proteins and pores, nanoscale ambient analysis using AFM, TERS and DESI and the development of new high-resolution optical imaging techniques.