INDUSTRIAL IMPACT, MEDICAL
businesswire | April 20, 2023
Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America, a subsidiary of diversified Japanese multinational company Asahi Kasei, and GeminiBio have entered into a strategic partnership to advance the application of inline buffer formulation (IBF) in the biopharmaceutical industry. Asahi Kasei Bioprocess, with decades of expertise in IBF and the developers of the award-winning MOTIV™ system, and GeminiBio, with industry leading bioprocess liquid manufacturing capabilities, are combining two high-efficiency solutions for buffer management to biopharmaceutical manufacturers in one package. This will result in fewer bottlenecks in manufacturing, streamlining the IBF process. The companies entered the agreement in March 2023 with the initial scope of the North American biopharmaceutical industry.
Buffers are used extensively in the development and manufacturing process for all biopharmaceuticals. The manufacturing of buffers is time consuming and resource intensive, and often a significant bottleneck in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process. The Asahi Kasei Bioprocess MOTIV IBF™ system is built specifically to debottleneck downstream processing to move product more efficiently through the manufacturing process. However, creating the buffer concentrates that are used with these systems has remained a challenge. Pairing MOTIV with GeminiBio’s pre-mixed concentrates provides biopharmaceutical manufacturers a total solution, resulting in a new level of efficiency and cost savings throughout the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process, yielding benefits throughout the entire value chain.
“Our partnership with GeminiBio solidifies both companies’ commitment to improving the efficiency and efficacy of buffer formulation,” says Chris Rombach, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America. “The combination of Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America’s long-standing buffer formulation expertise and GeminiBio’s state-of-the-art buffer concentrate manufacturing capabilities will aid bioprocessors to reduce costs, minimize facility footprint and assure on time, every time buffer production.”
Moving forward, while this collaboration will provide biopharmaceutical manufacturers with immediate benefit, the value is expected to increase exponentially over time with the open sharing of data and joint testing that will spur innovation at both companies. The MOTIV system will be better acclimated to immediately support a wider variety of pre-mixed buffer concentrates as the variety of the concentrates diversifies.
”We are excited to collaborate with Asahi Kasei Bioprocess to help the biotech industry further address the buffer bottleneck”, said Brian Parker, CEO of GeminiBio. “GeminiBio is committed to helping our customers simplify upstream and downstream process liquid manufacturing, and supporting inline dilution with ready to use buffer concentrates for the MOTIV IBF™ system allows us to provide an even higher level of simplification for our customers.”
The partnership between Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America and GeminiBio exemplifies the dedication of the Asahi Kasei Group to its mission of contributing to life and living for people around the world as it paves the way to innovation under their current medium-term management plan: Be a Trailblazer.
About Asahi Kasei Bioprocess
The Fluid Management Business Unit of Asahi Kasei Bioprocess is devoted to solving therapeutic product safety, efficiency, and purity challenges within the pharmaceutical and bioprocessing industries. With technology platforms for oligonucleotide synthesis, buffer formulation, chromatography, and filtration, our bioprocess systems, columns, and automation solutions advance GMP manufacturing of critical drug substances around the world. Built with pride, built with quality, built to exceed expectations.
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CELL AND GENE THERAPY, INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Globenewswire | May 02, 2023
Editas Medicine, Inc. a clinical stage genome editing company, announced that the journal Nature Biotechnology published the comprehensive data from a study of the proprietary SLEEK gene editing technology.
Despite major progress in achieving gene disruption with CRISPR-Cas gene editing technologies, efficient knock-in of transgenes continues to be a significant challenge for the gene editing field. To solve this challenge, SLEEK was developed to enable high knock-in efficiency with both viral and non-viral transgene formats while also ensuring robust simultaneous expression of up to four transgene cargos.
The study demonstrated that utilizing SLEEK results in the knock-in of multiple clinically relevant transgenes through a proprietary process that specifically selects only those cells containing the knock-in cargo. This process was developed by leveraging Editas Medicine’s proprietary engineered AsCas12a nuclease, which can achieve very high editing efficiency while maintaining high specificity. More than 90 percent knock-in efficiencies were observed in various clinically relevant target cells, including T cells, B cells, iPSCs, and NK cells. Additionally, SLEEK can be used to fine-tune the expression levels of transgene cargos, an important feature of next-generation cell therapies. As a demonstration of SLEEK’s potential value in clinical applications, the study authors used SLEEK to generate iPSC-derived NK cells capable of high-levels of in vivo persistence and robust tumor clearance in a solid tumor animal model.
“We are thrilled Nature Biotechnology published our paper sharing the comprehensive data on our SLEEK gene editing technology as we believe SLEEK has immense potential for gene editing drug development. As shared in the publication, SLEEK technology enables nearly 100 percent knock-in of functional transgene cargos at specific locations in the genome which may result in highly efficient multi-transgene knock-in for the next generation of cell therapy medicines,” said John A. Zuris, Ph.D., Director of Editing Technologies, Editas Medicine, and senior author on the study.
Editas Medicine believes that SLEEK may enable better product purity as well as shorter manufacturing timelines for the next generation of cell therapy medicines. Earlier this year, the Company announced it licensed its interest in the SLEEK technology to Shoreline Biosciences for specific usage in iPSC-derived NK and iPSC-derived macrophage cell therapies for oncology. The SLEEK technology remains an important Editas capability in iPSC engineering for a wide variety of future applications.
About Editas Medicine
As a clinical stage genome editing company, Editas Medicine is focused on translating the power and potential of the CRISPR/Cas9 and CRISPR/Cas12a genome editing systems into a robust pipeline of treatments for people living with serious diseases around the world. Editas Medicine aims to discover, develop, manufacture, and commercialize transformative, durable, precision genomic medicines for a broad class of diseases. Editas Medicine is the exclusive licensee of Broad Institute and Harvard University’s Cas9 patent estates and Broad Institute’s Cas12a patent estate for human medicines.
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AI, DIAGNOSTICS
Genomic Vision | March 08, 2023
On March 7, 2023, Genomic Vision, a leading biotech company that develops products and services for the analysis and control of genome changes, launched FiberSmart®, an AI-based technology for automating the quantification and detection of fluorescent signals on combed DNA molecules.
Initially available for the analysis of Replication Combing Assays (RCA), Genomic Vision's proprietary method for directly visualizing DNA replication kinetics at the single molecule level. FiberSmart uses advanced AI methods to detect, visualize, and analyze DNA replication kinetics up to 3x more accurately and up to 10x faster than Genomic Vision's existing software solutions.
The technology offers a simple and user-friendly interface, facilitating quick analysis of DNA replication signals to deduce essential parameters describing replication kinetics.
It is compatible with Genomic Vision's FiberVision® and FiberVision-S® scanners for the RCA assay of the company's proprietary DNA combing technology with various potential applications, including in gene and cell therapy quality control.
FiberSmart has been successfully tested and validated by AstraZeneca and the Fritz Lipmann Institute in Germany.
Genomic Vision's CEO Aaron Bensimon said, "The launch of FiberSmart® is an important milestone for Genomic Vision as we bring the benefits of powerful AI technology to our users, who can now perform faster and more accurate genomic analysis seamlessly. Our proprietary DNA combing technique has multiple potential applications, particularly in the cell and gene therapy space, where highly accurate genomic analysis is paramount to ensure robust quality standards are met. With the launch of this software we are making it easier for users to exploit the full potential of our proprietary advanced genomic analysis technique."
(Source – Business Wire)
About Genomic Vision
GENOMIC VISION is a leading biotechnology company specializing in the analysis of genome modifications, with a focus on ensuring their quality and safety in genome editing technologies and biomanufacturing processes. It utilizes advanced nanotechnology for DNA analysis to develop cutting-edge diagnostic and drug discovery solutions for cancer and acute diseases at the intersection of genome dynamics and human diseases. The company's approach employs Molecular Combing Technology, a powerful technique that directly visualizes single DNA molecules to detect and quantify changes in the genome landscape and their contribution to pathology.
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