Sweden-based Alfa Laval has entered into a joint marketing agreement with Millipore that will see the two firms work together to supply tools for the recovery of biopharmaceutical proteins generated by cell culture and fermentation.
The agreement calls for the co-promotion of Millipore's multi-layer Millistak+ HC depth filters and Alfa Laval's high-speed biotechnology centrifuges in the USA.
"The first steps in drug recovery after a bioreactor are often the most challenging and require a series of separation and filtration steps. In working with a leader like Millipore, we are able to provide our customers with an optimal solution for primary recovery," said Kirk Spitzer, chief executive of Alfa Laval's US division.
Under the terms of the agreement, each company will exclusively promote the other company's products to customers requiring centrifugation and depth filtration. Meantime, they will collaborate on sales activities, preparation and publication of technical articles, joint field-testing and customer demonstrations of the combination of centrifugation and depth filtration.
Susan Vogt, president of Millipore's biopharmaceutical division, said that the combination of Millipore and Alfa Laval's technologies would lead to improvements in customers' process efficiency, lower capital costs and reduced operating costs.
Millipore's Millistak+ HC depth filters combine two distinct separation technologies - charged depth media and membrane- to enhance filter capacity and retention. They are designed for removing whole cells or colloidal particulates in mammalian cell culture applications, from small batch processing to large volume production scales, and compress multiple stages of downstream bioreactor processes into a single step, according to Millipore.