Novozymes Biopharma of Nottingham, UK, a subsidiary of the Danish company Novozymes, and US-based Millipore have launched the first product from their alliance to supply animal-free cell culture supplements for bioprocessing.
CellPrime rTransferrin AF is the first animal-free alternative to serum-derived human or bovine transferrin for industrial cell culture and upstream biopharmaceutical applications.
CellPrime cell culture supplements enable customers to use defined, animal-free supplements in their biopharmaceutical production processes. The new rTransferrin AF is said to offer superior benefits over current plasma-derived alternatives, including facilitating effective iron uptake into cells for optimal cell culture. It is commercially available in scalable manufacturing quantities.
"˜We are pleased with the launch of our first commercial product and with the tremendous progress we have made in the first year of the alliance,' said Caspar Foghsgaard, senior manager at Novozymes Biopharma.
CellPrime rTransferrin AF is designed to reduce risk and ease regulatory concerns for biopharmaceutical manufacturers. It also improves the consistency of batch quality and productivity of customers' industrial cell culture processes. Manufactured in FDA-inspected facilities to cGMP standards, CellPrime rTransferrin AF is suitable for both research and commercial scale mammalian cell culture.
"˜The expansion of our animal-free cell culture supplements offering is a critical part of our Bioprocess Division's long-term strategy,' said Andrew Bulpin, vice president of Millipore's upstream bioprocessing business unit.
"˜By working with an industry leader like Novozymes, we can complement our applications expertise to bring new, innovative products to the market that improve productivity and reduce the risk to our customers.'
The new product will be manufactured by Novozymes Biopharma and sold exclusively through Millipore's sales organisation.