Press Release
ExcellGene SA first company to offer contract manufacturing in 250 Liter OrbShake bioreactor.
Cooperations with Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB) and Adolf Kühner AG
Prototype of orbital shake bioreactor presented at ACHEMA 2009
Monthey, 19 Mai 2009 - ExcellGene SA, a leading provider of contract manufacturing to the biopharmaceutical industry, expands its product offering with the introduction of the 250 Liter OrbShake bioreactor. OrbShake bioreactors rely on orbital shaking principles for mixing compared to stirring or wave-like movements in order to achieve a superior oxygen transfer while minimizing shear forces. The OrbShake bioreactors were developed jointly with Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB) and Adolf Kühner AG. ExcellGene SA will be the first company to offer to its clients production of recombinant proteins at the 50L to 200L scale in OrbShake bioreactors. The combination of orbital shaking with disposable technology will allow the fast and highly economical production of gram quantities of protein for pre-clinical testing and Phase I studies under cGMP and non-cGMP conditions. Prof. Dr. Wurm, founder and CSO of ExcellGene SA comments: "ExcellGene has always been at the forefront of innovation - be it our TubeSpin system for high-throughput process development or our transient gene expression technology platform with yields well above 1 gram per liter. With the introduction of our latest innovation, the 250L OrbShake bioreactor, we will be able to offer to our clients gram to 10s of gram quantities of recombinant proteins at unparalleled speed, quality and low cost. Orbital shaking allows for high yields and short timelines as it offers optimal growth and production conditions for mammalian cell lines. In combination with the cost, quality and time advantage of disposable technology, our platform provides a highly valuable alternative to conventional, stirred-tank bioreactors." If interested in our service offering, please contact us at :
contact@excellgene.com,
visit our web site at www.excellgene.com, or
give us a call at +41 79 772 9995. Previous press releases
ExcellGene and Kühner achieved milestone in development of novel 250 Liter mammalian cell culture bioreactors
May 12, 2009 ExcellGene SA, Monthey and Adolf Kühner AG, Birsfelden announce today that they achieved an important milestone in the development of a revolutionary cell culture technology for scale up and manufacturing from suspension cultured mammalian cells.
As part of a long-term partnership the two companies disclose today the successful conclusion of the technically challenging task of growing mammalian cells for the production of recombinant proteins in an orbitally shaken bioreactor. The mechanism of orbital shaking allows for efficient mixing of suspension cultures, while oxygenating cells through the head space. The cylindrical vessel contains a disposable, sterile bag with appropriate connection tubes for seeding, feeding, gas supply and harvesting of the culture. Compared to classical stirred tank bioreactors, OrbShake-bioreactors are much simpler and less costly to operate. The principles of orbital shaking technology with cylindrical vessels at smaller scale (50 ml to 10 Liter) has been object of preceding research and development at the two companies, and data obtained have shown that oxygen, the most important nutrient in animal cell culture, can be transferred to cells in such reactors as efficiently, if not more efficiently than any other bioreactor system used for animal cells so far. Cell culture data obtained from pilot experiments executed at ExcellGene have shown that growth and productivity from these reactors, now shown up to a scale of 200 Liters, are equivalent to those of fully instrumented non-disposable, glass or stainless steel stirred bioreactors. "The top-class technical and developmental expertise of Kühner AG in shaking technology is providing the necessary hardware knowledge that will be needed to tackle the challenging task of creating a revolutionary scale-up bioreactor system, that will provide products up to the multi-thousand liter scale from mammalian cells such as CHO, NS0 and PerC6. Cell culture technology has to be liberated from pre-formed thinking and unjustified mental barriers in order to provide more cost-effective and simpler procedures to subcultivate and expand cell biomass in reactors with the ultimate goal to produce recombinant proteins more efficiently." explains Dr. Wurm, Chief Scientific officer and Founder of ExcellGene. Markus Kühner, CEO of Kühner AG comments: "Shaking Technology was widely accepted for microbial cultures, but our collaboration with Dr. Wurm and his team, most notably the development of ExcellGene's TubeSpin®-bioreactor system at the small scale (50 ml) has opened our markets for incubator-shakers dramatically. We are now looking forward to a new system for growing cells in orbital shakers in scale and in technology, unthinkable just a few years ago." About ExcellGene SA Founded barely 5 years ago, ExcellGene SA, privately owned, is already a leading process science company in the pharmaceutical biotechnology sector. ExcellGene discovers and develops innovative technologies for the production of recombinant proteins from mammalian cells in bioreactors. As a service company, ExcellGene generates entire upstream cell culture processes for its customers, from DNA to scalable manufacturing under cGMP. Additionally, the company provides protein production services, based both on stable cell lines and on large-scale transient gene expression. The company is located in Monthey, Switzerland. For additional information, please visit http://www.excellgene.com or contact us directly at bd@excellgene.com. About Kühner AG Kühner AG, Birsfelden (Basel), Switzerland has been designing and manufacturing shakers since 1949. Known worldwide for our quality and reliability, our range spans from the small table top shakers / incubator shakers to the very large 6-tray pilot shaker. We sell them through a worldwide network of dedicated distributors. Cooperation with well-known universities / polytechnical schools and our own application-driven development department is the key to our innovation. We organize advanced training, conferences and individual consultancy for our customers in the application of shaken bioreactors thus complementing the Kühner range of services. For additional information about the company, please visit http://www.kuhner.com . Contact Markus HildingerChief Business Officer
ExcellGene SA
Route de l'ile-au-bois 1A
CH-1870 Monthey, Valais
Phone: +41 24-471-9660
contact@excellgene.com
www.excellgene.com
Transient expression of proteins from mammalian cells reach higher than 1 gram/liter yields
ExcellGene scientists accomplished an important breakthrough in recombinant antibody production based on transient gene expression (TGE) in mammalian cells in collaboration with the Laboratory of Cellular Biotechnology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Switzerland (EPFL). A scientific paper describing aspects of the established technology has been published in the highly recognized scientific journal Nucleic Acids Research.
Most current production methods in mammalian cells involve the time- and labor-consuming step of establishing stable cell lines. TGE is a novel concept for manufacturing of recombinant proteins. With TGE, it is not required to generate a stable cell line, but DNA encoding the protein of interest is directly used as an ingredient in the manufacturing process. This allows for fast production of recombinant proteins (from gene to gram and kilogram quantities of proteins within weeks instead of months). ExcellGene scientists succeeded in overcoming the major bottlenecks of transient gene expression in terms of low specific productivity and titers by multi-parameter vector and process optimization. With ExcellGene's new, patented TGExpress platform, specific productivity of 20 to 30 pg per cell per day and volumetric titers of more than 1 g/l can be obtained with transient gene expression. ExcellGene offers multiple services along the value chain to its customers based on its TGExpress platform- In combination with its TubeSpin satellite technology, ExcellGene offers high-throughput small-scale antibody lead production (10 to 20 mg). Here, hundreds of antibodies can be produced in parallel per month.
- Based on its Orbital Shake Bioreactor platform (1L to 1,000L scale), ExcellGene offers fast and reliable contract manufacturing of recombinant proteins using its TGExpress technology. ExcellGene customers can order grams of recombinant protein for preclinical studies to be delivered in weeks instead of months.
Building further on its strength in transient gene expression and orbital shaking bioreactors at the 1,000L scale, ExcellGene is in the process of establishing a GMP facility to further meet the needs of its customers. For further information about ExcellGene's services, please contact Dr. J. A. Balta at +41 24 471 9660, antonio.balta@excellgene.com
