Swiss CDMO to expand newly bought Glycotope biomanufacturing plant in Germany
“Glycotope Biotechnology GmbH business operations in Heidelberg, with all its tangible and intangible operating assets, are being acquired by Celonic AG,” Vikalp Mohan, Celonic VP of Global Commercial Operations at Swiss contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) Celonic, told Biopharma-Reporter.
“It’s an all- cash assets deal,” he said, though further financial details were not disclosed.
The site consists of five GMP biomanufacturing suites equipped with varying operational capacity of up-to 1,000L single-use bioreactors, he continued, adding Celonic is set on increasing capacity going forward.
“We will be immediately initiating work on expanding capacity with two new modular-expandable clean rooms with 2,000L single-use bioreactors each [a total of two], with plans to keep adding similar scale capacity in future.”
Around 120 staff working at Heidelberg will be kept on by Celonic, which will also manufacture for Glycotope at the site, However, Mohan said his firm’s “core business model continues to be serving bio-pharmaceutical customers, beyond Glycotope.”
The CDMO will also add Glycotope’s GEX human cell line platform to its own CHOvolution development platform, offering customers what it says is a “unique opportunity” to select a tailored expression system suitable for their biotherapeutic development needs.
The GEX platform offers clients glyco-optimization and high yield production of a variety of fully human glycosylated biopharmaceuticals, and by using a range of glyco-engineered proprietary human cell lines aimed at optimising a series of different determining sugars.
