The firm, part of DSM Pharmaceutical Products, used off-the-shelf culture media to scale-up its bio-manufacturing technology from 2 to 50L, with densities of 170m cells/ml and titres that are 5 to 10 fold higher than standard fed-batch perfusion processes.
DSM business development spokesman Jeremy Caudill said the project, which employed Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells, represented a “paradigm shift” in biologic drug production using mammalian lines.
“Companies can now substantially shrink their bioreactor size requirements by 5-10 fold, reducing the CAPEX required for building a new plant and ultimately reducing overall cost of goods.”
Such a cost saving is likely to be attractive to a drug industry facing financial pressure in the economic downturn, particularly those that are focused on the development of biologics rather than traditional small-molecule pharmaceuticals.
Larger contract manufacturers are also likely to be interested in high-yield bio-production capacity as it provides a competitive advantage in what is becoming an increasingly competitive part of the market.
XD in the news
News of the scale-up project comes just five days after DSM unveiled plans to combine the extreme density (XD) platform with purification technology acquired from Danish firm Upfront Chromatography.
The announcement is also likely to attract more attention for the new manufacturing facility DSM is building in partnership with the Australian government given that operations at the Queensland site will employ the XD platform.
DSM also said that the next stage of the scale-up project, which is to further expand the XD platform’s efficiency and production capacity, is expected to complete later this year.