Collaboration for improved separation systems for plasma proteins, and agreement to combine membrane and ligand technologies for expanded product offerings
Sartorius and ProMetic Life Sciences have announced the signing of a collaboration agreement utilizing bioseparation systems to recover proteins from human blood plasma, between Sartorius and ProMetic's subsidiary ProMetic BioTherapeutics.
ProMetic has developed with its partners, an innovative proprietary process, the Plasma Protein Purification System (PPPS), to fractionate blood plasma, which it licenses out to the blood-processing industry.
Within this alliance, Sartorius will be a preferred supplier and technology provider to ProMetic's PPPS licensees for filtration equipment and consumables.
In addition, Sartorius and ProMetic BioSciences have agreed to collaborate on the development of ligand-membrane composites for the isolation of the proteins from blood plasma and other sources.
These affinity composites will be based on ProMetic BioSciences's Mimetic Ligand technology and Sartorius's membrane chromatography technology Sartobind.
Blood components, particularly plasma proteins, form the basis of therapies used to treat clotting and wound-healing disorders, immunodefects and infectious diseases.
In order to recover active pharmaceutical proteins, such as factor VIII, plasminogen, fibrinogen, immunoglobulin G, A1PI or albumin during the fractionation process, the proteins are isolated and purified in various steps.
While many plasma protein fractionators still use the traditional Cohn process, the innovative PPPS technology from ProMetic offers the advantage of considerably higher recovery yields, purity and processing speed.
ProMetic's proprietary technology can also be applied to the recovery of certain proteins that have established therapeutic value, but cannot be extracted effectively via current manufacturing practices.
Uwe Gottschalk, vice president of purification technologies at Sartorius, stated that "the cooperation is in line with the company's strategic focus on current limitations in bioseparation.
"Nowadays, plasma protein fractionators are concentrating on increasing the yields and the profitability of their processes.
"The combination of ProMetic's innovative technology and Sartorius's integrated technology portfolio comes along at exactly the right time.
"This will help to overcome current manufacturing bottlenecks and launch commercial-scale recovery of plasma-derived proteins".
"The alliance will enable us to expand our product offering to our key customers by augmenting the capabilities of our ligand technologies," said Steve Burton, chief executive officer of ProMetic BioSciences .
"For certain applications, affinity membranes offer advantages over conventional chromatography columns.
We are very pleased to collaborate with Sartorius, which has a proven track record in the membrane adsorber field."
