Diamond Concise Annual Review 2021/22

34 35 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 1 / 2 2 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 1 / 2 2 Industrial Liaison I t has been a pleasure to see clients returning to the site although there have been fewer in- personmeetings and events this year. Despite the challenges of the pandemic the industrial programme at Diamond is thriving and we have had our busiest year to date. Many years of work to establish efficient and reliable workflows for remote and mail-in experiments have shown their worth, enabling the team to respond quickly and provide seamless support for our clients. Our data collection services continue to be extremely popular and have gained widespread adoption with our clients who value the flexible approach and trust us to collect precious data with professionalism and care. The physical science industrial programme is once again fully operational, and we continue to build our programme for diffraction, spectroscopy, scattering and imaging experiments. The life sciences industrial programme was paused very briefly in early 2020 and since then has continued to grow at great pace. Demand remains high for our macromolecular crystallography, cryo-Electron Microscopy, fragment screening and small angle scattering services and a new crystallisation service has been launched to help support clients at the early stages of drug discovery and give access to Diamond’s facilities and expertise. Although our primary focus remains our client projects, the ILO team continues with our own research and were the first users of the Versatile Soft X-ray (VerSoX) Beamline (B07-B) to measure the C, N and O K-edge spectra of a range of solid, organic crystal systems using Near Edge X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure (NEXAFS). Examples of our collaborative work include a study of the hydration behaviour of fluconazole, an antifungal drug, with scientists from Pfizer and the University of Manchester 1 . The team used high resolution powder diffraction studies on the High Resolution Powder Diffraction Beamline (I11) to show that both age and polymorphic form impact the drug’s kinetic stability to hydration. An initially undetectable monohydrate form of the drug was shown to have a seeding effect which impacted the hydration kinetics. The B24 beamline team worked with Activirosomes Ltd on a large project to characterise a novel vaccine platform using a 3D correlative microscopy approach. Active virosomes (AVs) are novel vaccine formulations that provoke an‘anti-viral’ immune response. The target virus antigens selected for this work were Chikungunya and Zika viruses that have no drug treatment or vaccine currently available. Combining cryo-Structured Illumination Microscopy (cryo- SIM) and cryo-soft X-ray tomography allowed visualisation of the 3D structure and antigen loading of AV populations and assessment of morphological variations across batches 2 . Preliminary results showed the effectiveness and robustness of the technique for characterising novel vaccine formulations such as AVs. Diamond continues to support industrial clients across a wide range of techniques and facilities with experiments ranging from routine analysis to complex bespoke solutions. Please do not hesitate to contact us on [email protected] to discuss your analytical needs, we would be happy to help. References 1. Basford PA et al . DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.1c00100 2. Okolo, C. A. et al . DOI: 10.1111/ jmi.13054 Anna Kroner conducting X-ray spectroscopy experiments. Alex Dias and Ailsa Powell preparing pucks for XChem experiments. Jitka Waterman loading pucks for MX experiments.