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Takeda divesting former-Shire $400m plant with 200 staff in Ireland

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Takeda has identified a biomanufacturing facility in Dunboyne, Ireland as no longer required in a strategic review of its production network following the acquisition of Shire. In January 2019, Takeda completed its $62 billion (€56 billion) acquisition of Shire. As part of its integration, the firm said it intended to divest up to 25% of the combined business. Part of this strategy includes a biologics facility in Dunboyne, County Meath Ireland. “A strategic review of Takeda’s global biologics manufacturing network,…

February 3, 2020

Middle class: Lonza on the flexibility of midscale biomanufacturing

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With construction of a 6,000 L scale hybrid plant underway, CDMO Lonza says there is high demand among its customers for midscale biomanufacturing. In this industry, companies and commentators like talking about extremes: either small-scale single-use or large-scale stainless steel. But speaking at the BPI Theater at BIO in Philadelphia earlier this month, Stéphane Varray, commercial development for midscale at Lonza Pharma and Biotech said midscale options provide firms with flexibility across numerous modalities. “When we look at midscale we’re…

June 14, 2019

Hey Big Vendor: With GE, Danaher becomes largest bioprocess player

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The $21.4 billion addition of GE Healthcare’s Biopharma business will complement Pall’s technologies to bring biomanufacturers a fully end-to-end bioprocessing offering. BioProcess Insider reported the news that Danaher Corporation has agreed to buy the Biopharma division of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences business for approximately $21.4 billion (€18.9 billion) on Monday. If the deal is completed, it will be the biggest merger in the bioprocessing space, dwarfing Danaher’s previous $13.8 billion takeover of Pall Corporation in 2015, and the similar size…

February 28, 2019

Cell therapy firms and vendors look to automation technologies

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Nearly 90% of cell therapy firms plan to invest further into automation technologies within five years, a KNect365 survey finds. KNect365’s Life Sciences Cell Therapy Automation Survey 2018 collated the responses of 158 life science executives and engineers. When asked to what extent companies are currently automating their process, the results ranged from 14% not using automation at all to 7% claiming all their processes are automated. This averages out to around 52% of processes being automated. Process automation (for…

February 8, 2019

Best Practices For Successful Filter Integrity Testing Using The Water Intrusion Test (WIT) Method

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Hydrophobic filter cartridges which utilize sterilizing-grade polyvinylidene fluoride or polytetrafluoroethylene membranes are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to sterilize compressed air or gases for product contact, as well as acting as sterile tank vents. However, hydrophobic membranes can also make filter integrity testing in situ difficult, as the membrane must be fully wetted prior to testing by the widely accepted integrity test methods of Bubble Point and Forward Flow. The Water Intrusion Test (WIT) is widely accepted within the…

June 24, 2015

Increasing Protein Yield – Optimization of Suspension CHO Transient Transfection

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with Dr. Laura Juckem High-efficiency transient transfections of suspension- adapted Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells enable researchers to bridge upstream and downstream processes. This helps to provide confidence that a recombinant protein will have the same properties throughout its development as a biologic. As drug targets become increasingly complex, proper protein folding and posttranslational modifications become more relevant. Early upstream work with the same cell type — e.g., CHO instead of HEK 293 cells — ensures similar product quality from…

January 8, 2015

Tabular Data for “Cell Therapy Bioprocessing Technologies and Indicators of Technological Convergence”

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Supplemental Tables The authors compiled a list of key cell therapy bioprocessing technologies through expert-user interviews; reviews of trade and industry literature; and discussions with technology manufacturers. Then they obtained technical specifications from publicly available documents and (whenever possible) confirmed them with the technology manufacturers to ensure their accuracy. Here are their results! Due to the size of the table structure, we were unable to print these results within our Cell Therapy Supplement, in March 2014. We instead have posted…

March 1, 2014

Electrophoresis: Analysis By Size and Charge

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BPI Lab An essential method in modern analytical laboratories, electrophoresis separates macromolecules (DNA, RNA, and proteins) for analysis based on their size and charge. The popular sodium-dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) technique uses a gel medium. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) can separate ionic species by charge and hydrodynamic radii as well as frictional forces in small electrolyte-filled capillaries. Cheryl Scott looks at the history and applications of these techniques, highlights their appearance in past BPI articles, and points to some…

January 1, 2014