September 28, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
EXTON, Penn. – Multiple deals throughout 2017 has lead Absorption Systems down a positive path of growth. Now the company is expanding two of its research facilities with plans to increase headcount by about 20 percent.
The company said it planned to expand facilities near Philadelphia and San Diego. The expansion project is expected to grow the company’s physical footprint by approximately 50 percent, Absorption Systems announced Thursday. The company said the expansion has been “driven by sustained demand” for Absorption System’s “high quality contract services,” as well as “growing demand for the company’s contract manufacturing and commercial release testing in the nascent gene therapy and cell therapy markets.”
“This current expansion of the company is a result of a strategic plan for sustained incremental growth in a number of different growing areas, in particular our initiative into potency testing for gene and cell therapy products,” Patrick Dentinger, Absorption System’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
There are already a number of openings posted on the company’s online jobs portal, including research associate and bioanalytical scientist.
The expansion was announced about a week after Absorption Systems announced a formal research collaboration agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the improvement of animal companion medication. The agreement aims to advance the FDA’s ability to predict canine oral drug product absorption characteristics and to help identify factors that influence canine oral drug product performance. The project is expected to have implications beyond caring for animal companions. Dogs are often used in preclinical models for human drug development, which will benefit the development for human medications too, the company said.
Also earlier, Absorption Systems branded its a dedicated cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) testing facility for gene and cell therapy products, as ACF Bioservices.
In January, the company forged a licensing agreement with pharma giant Pfizer for a human cell line engineered to express an individual drug transport protein. The cell line is stably transfected with the human SLCO1B1 gene, which codes for a protein known as organic anion transporting polypeptide (OATP) 1B1, according to data. The line is designed to test for potential safety issues early in the drug development process, the company said when the deal was announced.
“This human OATP1B1 assay system will enable Pfizer to test potential new drug candidates for interactions with OATP1B1, which plays a central role in the effectiveness, safety, and drug-drug interactions of many drugs, including the widely used statins,” Absorption Systems said in its announcement.
Another significant deal the company has is with Boston-based Biogen . In November 2016, the two companies renewed a licensing agreement for Absorption Systems’ drug transporter test systems.
