Massachusetts-based life sciences company Repligen manufactures Protein A ligands, a critical component of Protein A chromatography media, from its facilities in Lund, Sweden, and Waltham, Massachusetts.
The firm has been supplying bioprocessing tech firm GE Healthcare for over 15 years, but announced this week it has struck a deal to extend supply through to 2019 from the Swedish facility and 2021 from the US site.
“Repligen is one of the largest producers of Protein A ligands and GE has a long standing Strategic Supplier Alliance Agreement with them,” GE’s BioProcess Senior Product Manager Jonathan Royce told Biopharma-Reporter.com
“They have an excellent track record of supplying us with Protein A ligands and have been recognized on several occasions as a top supplier to GE Healthcare.”
He added Repligen’s two separate manufacturing sites was also a key in the supply extension as it “aligns directly with GE’s overall Security of Supply program which ensures an uninterrupted supply of critical raw materials to our customers.”
Protein A
Despite the cost of Protein A, the efficacy of the resin in capturing antibodies in the downstream process is undeniable, and ensuring supply is essential as the biopharma world continues to focus on mAbs and Fc-fusion proteins, Royce continued.
“Protein A provides unmatched purity in a single purification step and allows companies to build purification platforms which simplify manufacturing and process development operations.
“Without Protein A, the purification of monoclonal antibodies would be far more complex and expensive than it is today.”
GE couples the ligands to its own agarose-based chromatography beads, and performs QC analysis and final filling of these products at its site in Uppsala, Sweden.
According to Royce, the Uppsala site is one of the largest in the world for the production of chromatography media, producing over 350,000 liters per year for its biopharma customers.