Cytiva snaps up Cevec, boosting cell line and viral vector services

Cevec’s cell line development capabilities are a highly complementary addition to Cytiva’s bioprocessing portfolio, the firm says.

The acquisition announced this morning sees Germany’s CEVEC and its 46 staff join bioprocess giant Cytiva for an undisclosed amount.

The deal brings Cytiva a range of cell line development and viral vector manufacturing technologies, which Emmanuel Abate, president of Genomic Medicine at Cytiva, told BioProcess Insider will be “highly complementary” to the biomanufacturing tools and services offered by Cytiva and fellow Danaher Corporation-owned company Pall.

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AndreyPopov

(Last month, Danaher announced the two bioprocess businesses would be coming together under the banner of ‘The Biotechnology Group’ though the timeline has not yet been divulged.)

“The combined Cytiva and Pall product portfolios allow us to offer equipment and consumables for every upstream and downstream unit operation. Cevec’s cell line development capabilities are a highly complementary addition to this portfolio because it enables Cytiva to engage with customers earlier than we do today, and it allows us to tackle their most significant pain point, which is making more and stable viral vectors in a more consistent way.”

In the last couple of years, Cevec has inked adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector manufacturing deals and licensed its ELEVECTA technology with the likes of UCB and Roche. ELEVECTA technology is based on stable producer cell lines, without the need for any helper viruses or large amounts of GMP-grade plasmids or transfection reagents, which the firm says enables scalability and high batch-to-batch consistency.

Nicole Faust, CEO of Cevec Pharmaceuticals, told us: “Cevec will be going to market as Cytiva with the Cytiva name. Its products will still be available under the product names ELEVECTA and CAP. The visual identity (logos, colors, font, etc.) will be replaced with the Cytiva visual identity.”

Like the other large bioprocess vendors, Cytiva has been heavy on M&A over the past few years. In 2021 alone, the company acquired Vanrx Pharmasystems, GoSilico, and Intermountain Life Sciences. CEVEC is the first full company acquisition for Cytiva in 2022, though the firm picked up a chromatography resin plant from BASF in Muskegon, Michigan back in July.