Naarden, The Netherlands, 13th March 2008 – BAC BV, the Bio Affinity Company, announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Octapharma AG (Lachen, Switzerland), a plasma protein company specialising in the development, production and sale of plasma derivatives and recombinant plasma proteins. The objective of the collaboration is to discover and develop a custom CaptureSelect® ligand for the purification of a recombinant Factor IX product, developed by Octapharma for the prophylaxis and treatment of bleeding in Haemophilia B. Octapharma will use the CaptureSelect ligand in the downstream processing of this protein from mammalian cell lines.
BAC has a proven reputation for successful partnering with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to develop ligands for a variety of applications, from monoclonal antibodies and fusion proteins, to viruses and plasma proteins.
“We have proven that we can design ligands for almost any purification challenge,” commented Laurens Sierkstra, CEO of BAC. “Our technology platform enables us to work with our partners to produce affinity media that is custom designed for each individual purification target, meaning that our customers can have absolute confidence that their purification process will be a success. We are very much looking forward to working with Octapharma on this project.”
BAC’s CaptureSelect ligand technology is based on unique Camelid single chain antibody fragments, which can be selected for desirable chromatographic characteristics and produced at high-titre in a proprietary S. cerevisiae strain. The CaptureSelect ligands are suitable and available for use at commercial scale biomanufacturing and for bench research.
About BAC BAC BV – the Bio Affinity Company – offers a wide range of products and services for affinity purification of biological materials from complex media. The Company’s proprietary CaptureSelect® affinity ligands, based on Camelid single chain antibody fragments, have been proven to be suitable in a wide range of biological applications including Life Science Research and Biomanufacturing.
CaptureSelect® ligand technology is based on selection of single chain antibody fragments with desirable chromatographic characteristics including robustness, high specificity and flexibility. Suitable ligands are cloned and expressed in high-titers through an animal-free Saccharomyces cerevisiae-based process.
BAC BV was established in 1995 as a Unilever subsidiary. Currently the Company employs 28 people with an R&D laboratory facility in Vlaardingen and a state-of-the-art ISO 9001 certified manufacturing plant in Naarden, the Netherlands. For more information about BAC, visit our website at www.bac.nl. For more information about CaptureSelect® products, visit our website at www.captureselect.com
Media enquiries: Kathryn Robertson, College Hill Kathryn.Robertson@collegehill.com Tel: +44 (0)1260 296 506 Kathryn Robertson +44 (0)1260 296 506
