Cardinal deal for Centocor cell-line development
development technology to engineer cell lines expressing Centocor's
monoclonal antibodies, and speed up the development of new
biopharmaceuticals.
Through insertion of multiple copies of the gene, >Cardinal's patented Gene Product Expression (GPEx) technology can generate stable cell lines that exhibit significantly higher levels of expression than those cell lines generated by other methods, in as little as half the time.
The GPEx technology has been integrated with clinical scale mammalian cell culture manufacturing to enable rapid genetic engineering of mammalian cell lines to produce candidate gene products, as well as pilot and large-scale production of human antibodies and other therapeutic recombinant proteins.
Financial terms of the agreement between >Centocor and Cardinal Health were not disclosed, however, Centocor does have the option of expanding the collaboration depending on the evaluation of these first GPEx cell lines.
"We have made great progress in developing both the GPEx technology, as well as our manufacturing capabilities, especially for antibodies, and are looking forward to proving our ability to rapidly engineer stable, high expressing cell lines for Centocor to evaluate," said Paul Weiss, president of Cardinal Health's biopharmaceutical development services center.
"As we continue to integrate these services, we are creating an offering that is unmatched in terms of breadth for both clinical and commercial projects, as we can literally go from the gene for an antibody to packaged vials distributed to the clinic," said John Lowry, president and COO of the Pharmaceutical Technologies and Services group of Cardinal Health.
