Bayer HealthCare has signed a license agreement with Millipore to use technology that could improve the efficiency of its biopharmaceutical production.
Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed. However, the global, non-exclusive agreement will allow Bayer to use Millipore’s ubiquitous chromatin opening element (UCOE) technology to manufacture its biologic drugs.
Andrew Bulpin, vice-president of Millipore’s upstream bioprocessing business, said: ‘This license is another example of how we can help pharmaceutical and biotech companies efficiently manufacture biologic drugs for both commercial use and for use in clinical development.’
According to Millipore, the technology will allow Bayer to generate higher protein yields in its upstream bioprocessing operations and thus more efficiently manufacture recombinant proteins in mammalian cells. Manufacturing drugs such as recombinant proteins involves growing mammalian cells in a bioreactor, which then produce the required protein, and Millipore’s technology is said to be able to efficiently identify the most productive cells.
Bayer plans to expand the use of UCOE from small-scale research and development to large-scale manufacturing. Other applications of the UCOE technology include gene therapy, transgenics, and generation of cell lines for drug screening.
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