Antibiotic Assays
Measuring the bioactivity of antibiotics

What is an Antibiotic Assay?

The Antibotic assay or biopotency assay is a method of measuring the bioactivity of various antibiotics. The assay demonstrates how efficacious the antibiotic is in killing bacteria, this is expressed as a ratio of the dose.

Why do we do it?

Determination of biopotency is essential in the quality assurance of antibiotics. All antibiotics must go through potency testing prior to market release.

How can we help assure compliance?

Here at Honeyman we are experts in bioassay method transfer, this is one of our most utilized services by our clients and as such we have on-site specialists in this area. We currently perform Bioassay testing to EP and USP.

Primarily we use the diffusion cylinder-plate method to assay biopotency. This involves cutting a well into the agar layer for the antibiotic preparation to diffuse out from. This agar layer is seeded with bacteria and the clearance zone around the well can be read as a measure of potency.

We have experience with a variety of result interpretation using validated client spreadsheets and CombiStats™. We can tailor the testing to suit your current validated testing requirements as part of the method transfer.