Company collaboration to help biopharma firms

Collaboration between Dutch biotech company DSM Biologics and Danish firm Upfront Chromatography could offer productivity benefits to biopharmaceutical manufacturers.

The combination of Upfront's disposable chromatography system and DSM's proprietary manufacturing technology will deliver a flexible and high capacity bioprocessing platform that can be scaled from 0.1L to 100L for commercial manufacture and recovery of a range of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies.

The system is expected to be available for commercial use by the summer of 2008. Upfront's proprietary cGMP-manufactured adsorbents, fluid processing platforms and ligand chemistries enable the production of a fully disposable chromatography system for bioprocessing: bringing together the excellent performance of affinity chromatography with the safety and cost-effectiveness of disposable components.

"Industrial chromatography systems were for many years thought to have no fully disposable solution," said DSM Biologics president Karen King.

"Together with Upfront, we will be developing a combination of a unique disposable module and a high yield cell line that will for the first time enable the creation of a fully integrated, disposable biologic manufacturing process."

Michael Bennett, Upfront ceo of Upfront, "The biopharmaceutical industry has been seeking fully disposable chromatography systems over recent years. Our technology offers manufacturers all the productivity benefits they expect from industrial-scale chromatography systems and with DSM Biologics we have the perfect partner to drive this combination of disposable systems and high yield cell lines to market."