Commonwealth Biotechnologies has announced a number of contracts in recent weeks, the latest being new deals involving one of its four divisions, CBI Services.
Details of the nature of the new business is sketchy, what is know is that it involves several private sector and one government contracts, collectively valued at around $1.4m.
The government contract spans a three year term while most of the private sector work will commence this quarter and last until at least the third quarter, the firm said.
"What is most important about the new private sector projects is not necessarily their magnitude, but that they are all with biotech and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies who are engaged in early discovery and development studies. These are the customers for whom CBI Services can make the most impact as an outsource provider", the firm said.
Elaborating slightly more, the company said these projects require integration of virtually all of its platform technologies, including mass spectral analysis for novel plasma biomarker peptides, production of RNAs, characterisation of proteinaceous biologics, and validation of esoteric molecular genetic assays.
The government initiative involves the use of CBI's mass spectrometry platform for detection and confirmation of biotoxin toxins in suspect samples.
Meanwhile, these new contracts were announced by Commonwealth Biotechnologies only a short time after one of its other services units, Exelgen, was awarded $2.9m in new contracts.
However, even less information about these new deals was forthcoming, apart from the fact that they involved two "prominent" European-based Biotechnology companies.
"Because of the proprietary nature of the collaborations both companies have declined to be identified or disclose the contract values at this time. One company is a long standing client, the other a new client," the firm said, adding that the partnerships encompass a range of collaborative research activities including medicinal chemistry and application of Exelgen's LeadHopping technology to identify and progress lead compound series into preclinical studies.
In other news, Australian stem cell technologies specialist, Stem Cell Sciences (SCS) has revealed the signing of a contract research agreement with major biopharmaceutical company, whose identity remains undisclosed, along with the monetary terms of the deal.
Under the agreement SCS will use its cell processing technologies for the scale up and automated production of human embryonic stem cells and will also demonstrate the bulk production of cells pertinent to its client's diabetes research, at its Cambridge-based production facility.
