Case Study: Probiotic Flow Cytometry Enumeration for Low Plate Counts
The Challenge
A client has a new product named "Super Gut Health Probiotic Capsule" with a label claim of 10 billion CFU/serving. They formulated the product with 12 billion CFU/serving. However, the plate count results show an average of 4.8 CFU/serving. They came to us to determine the cause of a low plate count.
Our Approach
Our team suggested using flow cytometry to assist with finding a cause for the low plate counts. Flow cytometry provides accurate and rapid counts of alive, dead, and injured cells, which can aid in formulation investigations. The results showed 4.8 billion AFU live cells, 1.3 billion AFU injured cells, and 6.1 billion AFU dead cells.
The Solution
While the product was formulated correctly, it is experiencing die-off during the manufacturing, storage, or transport process. A thorough evaluation of the processing procedures revealed that the storage temperature was too high, resulting in die-off.
Our Team
Eurofins Microbiology Laboratories, Inc. in Madison, WI is our Center of Excellence to support probiotics and has the necessary expertise and capabilities to individually evaluate each product and ensure we are preparing the samples for accurate identification, enumeration, or contamination. We actively work with probiotic suppliers to become qualified to run their strain-specific enumeration procedures and offer them to our joint customers.
Reach out to us to learn more about how we can partner with your team!
