Our field trip was organized on 10

th
April 2012 to SIRIM Shah Alam. SIRIM - stand for
Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia where they are doing research on variety
of plant, animals, microbes and other product. They also help young entrepreneur to set up a
business and sell product formulated by SIRIM for example toiletries, and cosmetic products.
The purpose of our field trip is to understand the working environment in SIRIM and how they
applying Biotechnology concept to do research and developing product. SIRIM consist of many
labs for example, Bacteriology lab, cosmetic lab and toxicology lab.

We were welcomed by Mr.Jaafar, who is one of the researchers in SIRIM. He roughly briefs
about SIRIM and how they conducting research and dealing internationally with other companies
in Japan and Indonesia. After a short briefing, we went to cosmetic lab where cosmetics for skin
care and toiletries were formulated. For skin care, they create skin moisturizer, day cream, sun
block and toner while for toiletries, the create shampoo, shower gel, and hair cream. They
process the raw material of the product using equipment such as homogenizer, pH meter, and
hot-plate stirrer to homogenize the product. SIRIM develop the product for any cosmetic
company and the company can produce their own cosmetic brand. If the companies need
different texture, colour and fragrance of product, they will reformulate the product to meet the
companys requirement.

Before the product is released to market, SIRIM will run the stability test and safety test in
Cosmetic Safety and Toxicology Lab (CST) before they produce large amount in GMP Pilot
Plant. SIRIM will select volunteer to test the product, for example face cream, the volunteer will
be checked every week to see the effectiveness of the face cream by using two instrument called
Mexameter and Cutometer. Mexameter is used to measure the Melanin and Erythema of the skin.
So, when the melanin level is getting lower, the cream is said to be effective on the skin.

Our next stop was at the cosmetic lab specialized in the production of make-up materials such as
lipsticks, eye shadow, where they produce in different colours. The colours are extracted from
natural plants such as henna and dragon fruit. In the production of lipsticks, they use large
amount of wax and oil called exotic oil which is from botanical extract such as virgin coconut oil
and sunflower oil. Besides, they also use other substances such as sea cucumber extract, grape
seed oil which provide vitamin C to the product. This shows that, SIRIM is very particular in
developing zero-chemical product. The latest lipstick product formulated by SIRIM is the long-
lasting lipstick where the colour of the lipstick follows the body temperature and last longer than
ordinary lipstick.

Next, we went to Biosensor lab where, they run analysis of chemical such as ammonia by using
two type of sensor called Electrochemical based Biosensor, and Optical based Biosensor. For
electrochemical based biosensor, they used a screen printed electrode. They also used a
specialized enzyme to detect the concentration of certain chemical or substance in a sample.
They also develop nano-material to improve the sensitivity of the sensor used such as Quantum
Dots which have fluorescence property and increases the sensitivity. Besides, they also have
nano-chip and nano-gap where it contains nano dots that can be seen using special equipment.

After Biosensor lab, we went to Mammalian cell culture lab. The purpose of this lab is to run
safety test on a product so that the product is not harmful to human. This safety test follows the
Malaysian Standard and ISO guidelines - ISO 10993 : 5 in-vitro study which is for medical
device and safety. Companies that produce their products, such as water tank, mouthwash,
detergent will send their product sample to SIRIM and here they will undergo the safety test
using living cells as testing cell to ensure that the product is non-toxic for human. Some of the
test will be run in a cleanroom where only one selected person can go in and out of the
cleanroom. The cells are kept in CO
2
Incubator which it is maintained with 5% of CO
2
and 95%
of H
2
O. The cells can be observed using inverted microscope where the cells will project on the
screen. One of the cells used in the lab was vero-cell which is from monkeys kidney. These cells
were cultured in biological safety cabinet class 2. The equipment used in cell culture is the
micropipette where it can suck 5 microliter to 120 microliter of cells culture. They will place the
cell in product sample from companies and observe the cell after 2 3 days to check whether the
cell is alive or dead. Then, they will make a conclusive report by stating either the product is
toxic or non-toxic.

Next we went to Microbial Isolation and Screening lab which is also known as Astellas lab. The
person in-charge, Mr. Khairul said that this lab was established under the project of Astella,
which is the second largest pharmaceutical company in Japan. In this lab they have 4000 types of
fungus and 4000 types of actinomycin. These microbes were isolated from the soil sample
collected from forest all around Malaysia peninsular and kept in a slant tube. Besides, in this lab
they prepare fermented broth and send it to Japan for further research on development of drugs.
Some of microbes isolated in this lab are Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus,. Some
microbes tend to produces colour which can be used in textile, paint and cosmetics product.
Fungus produces green colour and actinomycin produces red colour. He added that different
composition of agar produces different types of colour such as blue, black, yellow and white.

Our last visit was Pilot Plant. There are many operating machineries, such as, two types Stirrer
Tank Reactor, the top stirrer plate and bottom stirrer plate, Air Lift Fermentor, and Starch
Liquefaction Tank where the raw materials will fermented and produced here before sent for
further research. From this field trip, I learnt how biotechnology can be applied in different field
to produce a better enhanced product for example the production of cosmetic product, colours
from microbes, biosensor, and mammalian cell culture and toxicology test.