Biosana and A*STAR in continuous bioprocessing laboratory project
BiosanaPharma and A*STAR’s Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI) announced a research collaboration which will see scientists from both teams set up a laboratory in Biopolis, Singapore, following the incorporation of a local entity by Biosana.
According to Biosana, the joint work aims to address the current challenges of diverse product pipelines, as well as the rising competition due to the development of biosimilars, which leads companies to the need for highly flexible and cost-effective manufacturing processes.
The continuous biomanufacturing space will be based on Biosana’s 3C manufacturing technology for monoclonal antibodies, which, according to the company, is the only end-to-end fully continuous service available on the market.
“It is basically ‘batch made continuous’, which implies that we use the same unit operation in upstream and downstream as the classical producers do,” Nettie Buitelaar, the company’s chief business officer, explained to us, adding that this process also ensures the regulatory compliance of the technology.
The company’s 3C platform was the first technology to achieve fully continuous manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies, according to Biosana.
3C is designed based on the metabolism of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, enabling the production of a wide range of biologic therapeutics, with the potential to allow processing of different types of cells as well.
The executive noted that continuous manufacturing offers many advantages compared to batch processes, including smaller footprint, ‘far less’ capital expenditure, higher productivity, more efficient use of the resources, and lower cost of the final product.
Especially on the topic of lowering drug prices, Buitelaar noted that the biosimilar industry will see a ‘battle’ over the following years, which will leave “only the most efficient manufacturers” on the market, “as has happened in the small molecules/generic industry as well.”
