Sartorius Stedim Biotech and Bayer Technology Services (BTS) have signed an exclusive co-operation agreement on the manufacture and worldwide marketing of Uvivatec products.
With the technology developed by BTS, viruses are inactivated in biopharmaceuticals by UVC irradiation.
Typical areas of use are virus inactivation of cell culture media, antibody solutions and solutions containing recombinant proteins, as well as irradiation of vaccines and therapeutics produced from blood and plasma.
Further areas of application, such as removal of mycoplasma from bioreactor media, are being assessed.
By co-operating with BTS, Sartorius Stedim Biotech has three different technological methods for virus clearance: the Sartorius Virosart CPV product removes viruses by nanofiltration, Sartobind accomplishes this by adsorption of viruses and Uvivatec inactivates viruses by UVC irradiation.
The three technologies can be combined with one another, enabling an especially effective approach for removal of a broad spectrum of different viruses.
The proprietary Uvivatec technology is ideal for highly efficient inactivation of small non-enveloped viruses (for example, Parvo viruses).
The Uvivatec technology is therefore suitable as an alternative or supplementary method for upstream and downstream processing.
The technology is scalable and marketed by Sartorius Stedim Biotech as single-use modules, laboratory bench units and process systems.
Beyond this, Sartorius Stedim Biotech will be offering non-GLP virus studies and - in collaboration with BTS - further process development and engineering services.
BTS will also contribute its expertise to this partnership and actively work with Sartorius Stedim Biotech on the further advancement of this technology.
In close collaboration with this co-operation agreement, Sartorius Stedim Biotech signed a purchase contract with the Belgian Red Cross on patents to use UVC technology for blood fractionation and manufacture of biotech products.
