Pall completes protein purification acquisition

BioSepra offers chromatography sorbents, and Eric Krasnoff, Pall's chairman and CEO, said the business "fits in well with our significant market position in drug discovery and protein purification."

In addition, the two companies are entering into a collaboration for process proteomics, based on the combination of Ciphergen's SELDI ProteinChip technology and BioSepra's chromatography products. This will provide a 'bridge' between the research lab and large-scale drug production.

Process proteomics is a concept originated by Ciphergen, and is based on high-speed protein purification, making use of its ProteinChips to carry out modelling of protein purification and analysis. The combination of this analysis with BioSepra's purification sorbents enables processes to be discovered and then scaled up from lab to production.

"Our goal is to provide total fluid management to our customers in industrial protein purification," Krasnoff said in a statement. "BioSepra has always had an excellent reputation for the quality of its sorbents and the addition of their chromatography media to our product offerings is highly complementary for our company."

Pall said it plans to establish Process Proteomics Service Centers based on Ciphergen's existing Process Proteomics Service Centers to help its customers choose and optimize sorbents and membranes for protein purification used in therapeutic protein production.

Ciphergen said it will retain certain 'limited rights' to access BioSepra's chromatography sorbent technology for manufacture, use and sale in the research and diagnostic markets.