Cellexus Limited, a leading supplier of innovative single use, disposable bioreactors which are designed to simplify and improve cell culture, has appointed Dr Sandy Primrose as its new Chairman. Dr Primrose, who has been a non-executive director of the Company since July 2009, succeeds Mr Kevin Borrett who is also standing down as a director from Cellexus Limited and Cellexus Inc.
Mr Bob Cumming, Cellexus Limited General Manager, said in a statement, “I’d like to thank Mr Borrett for his excellent contribution as Chairman since the company was established. Under his stewardship we have successfully launched the CellMaker Regular Bioreactor to simplify cell culture and fermentation processes and made excellent progress on new product development which will result in the launch of additional bioreactor systems in late 2009. Having achieved these significant milestones we are now in a phase of focussed commercialisation and we welcome Sandy to his new role as Chairman to drive the Company forward through this next stage of growth.
Mr Borrett added: “I am very proud of what the Company has accomplished during the period in which I have been actively involved and thank everyone who has contributed to that success. Sandy has significant experience in the biopharmaceutical sector which is of strategic importance in management of the Company’s growth moving forward.” Dr Primrose commented: “I am very pleased to be appointed as Chairman of the Cellexus Board. I look forward to working with the team of Directors and Management to drive growth through sales of the Company’s proprietary disposable bioreactor products as well as the new products we will be launching very shortly.”
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) elements of the CellMaker bioreactors that the Company markets are the CellexusBag™ and HybridBag. These single use, disposable self contained bags form a product range (there are currently six variants of the CellexusBag™ and two variants of the HybridBag) which are 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 and the latest grant of patent in June 2009.
