Cellexus Limited, a leading supplier of innovative single use, disposable bioreactors which are designed to simplify and improve cell culture and fermentation bioprocesses, has appointed Discovery Scientific as their distributor in Canada. This further distributor appointment is part of an ongoing geographical expansion to drive sales of the Cellexus products in key territories as the Company continues to grow.
Mr Paul Stubbings, Cellexus Limited Chief Operating Officer, said in a statement, “Discovery Scientific is well established in the Canadian market with excellent contacts with customers in the market sectors for the Cellexus products. We are delighted to have entered into this distribution agreement which is illustrative of our ongoing commitment to broaden our geographical coverage with key distributors who are highly experienced in these markets. Selling into Canada presents unique challenges so it makes good business sense for us to work with Discovery Scientific, with the local knowledge and expertise as well as an established client base, to drive sales in this geography”.
Dr Martin Peet, CEO of Discovery Scientific commented “We are very pleased to be working with Cellexus Limited in the sales of the Cellexus single use, disposable bioreactor systems in Canada.” Dr Peet added: “Our strategy is to work with manufacturers with advanced R&D programs focused on improving current products or developing novel instrumentation to meet existing or emerging customer needs. Cellexus, with its ongoing development of single-use bioreactor systems, is totally aligned to this and we are looking forward to working with Cellexus to build sales in Canada”
The Cellexus CellMaker systems apply single-use, disposable cell culture bioreactor bags with highly efficient methods to mix and oxygenate. Whilst other systems require shakers, rockers, rollers or large environmental chambers, the CellMaker systems employ a novel airlift technology which is simple, scalable, inexpensive to use and proven to out-perform cell culture in flasks. The CellexusBags, which are the unique single-use, disposable cell culture bags in which cells are grown in the CellMaker Regular system, enable fast set-up times and eliminate cleaning requirements. The CellMaker Regular very efficiently aerates the CellexusBag with controlled air flow providing oxygen for cell growth and gentle and effective mixing to maintain cells in suspension. Pressure control enhances oxygen availability to cells as well as decreases foaming and temperature control enables production of high yields of soluble protein under optimal conditions.
About Cellexus Limited
Cellexus Limited (Huntingdon, UK) provides a range of instruments and value added consumables to help researchers in the biopharmaceutical industry and academia develop new biopharmaceutical products from cell lines.
Biopharmaceuticals are a rapidly evolving range of therapeutics generated by culturing cells in bioreactors and include proteins, antibodies or vaccines, with the possible of future medical treatments offered by stem cell research also falling into this category. Sales of biopharmaceuticals reached US$60 billion in 2005 and are growing at 20% per year.
The Company’s core technology is at the centre of a range of different product configurations and formats the Company offers that can be used for production of biological cells and proteins in a single-use, disposable bag format. This same configuration can also be used in biopharmaceutical manufacture for mixing various materials under clean and sterile conditions. These product range offer significant technological improvements for cell culture and cell growth to the biopharmaceutical industry.
The single-use, disposable (consumable) element of the CellMaker bioreactors that the Company markets is the CellexusBag™. This single use, disposable self contained bag forms a product range which is manufactured under clean room conditions and to the ISO standards required by the biopharmaceutical industry. The bioreactor products come with built-in chiller units and an oxygen generator, which removes the need for piped gas. The gentle flow of gas bubbles mixes the contents and the bag design reduces foaming. The CellMaker equipment used to manage the cell culture process is very simple, efficient and inexpensive to use. A patent protecting the Company’s Intellectual Property in this area was filed in December 2005 with a second patent application filed in June 2007.
About Discovery Scientific
Discovery Scientific Inc. is a Vancouver-based firm focused on delivering high-quality instrumentation, software and consumables to clients in the life and analytical sciences across Canada. The company was established in 2005 by experienced instrumentation sales and marketing specialists to provide full distribution and customer support capability to non-Canadian manufacturers seeking to establish or expand their sales in the Canadian marketplace. All of the companies that Discovery Scientific represent have advanced R&D programs focused on improving current products or developing novel instrumentation or software solutions to meet existing or emerging life or analytical sciences needs.
Discovery’s product line is comprised of both cutting edge instrumentation and products that have wide application in most laboratories. The latter includes such indispensable instruments as hot plates, stirrers, vortex mixers and homogenizers while the former includes products such as specialized laboratory robots and advanced scheduling software. Discovery’s product lines have been assembled to provide stand-alone instrument solutions or complete instrument suites for microbiological laboratories or for specialty applications in the fields of genomics and proteomics. The company has also chosen product lines so that products from one manufacturer can be seamlessly integrated with instruments from another manufacturer to create, for example, complete robotic platforms for high throughput, walk-away automation of complex laboratory processes.
