BioProcessors' SimCell Platform Selected By Novo Nordisk

Having Identified Rapid, Early Process Development as Critical to the Success of Novo Nordisk's Biologics Programs, Company Chooses SimCell MicroBioreactor System For High-Throughput Mammalian Cell Culture Process Development

Woburn, MA - BioProcessors announced the sale of the SimCell MicroBioreactor Automation Management System to Novo Nordisk A/S, having successfully completed platform evaluation trials. Novo Nordisk employs 21,000 employees in 78 countries, and markets its products in 179 countries. The SimCell platform enables Novo Nordisk to rapidly accelerate their mammalian cell culture process development initiatives. As a result of the joint effort, the companies demonstrated the predictability and scalability of BioProcessors' MicroBioreactor Array and a high-throughput robotic workstation to conventional bioreactor systems. BioProcessors' SimCell MicroBioreactor solutions enable biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to increase cell culture experiment capacity by orders-of-magnitude with greater data quality, faster cycles and lower costs than conventional biopharmaceutical processing methods.

"Existing high-throughput systems emphasize miniaturization at the expense of performance and data generation, in most cases limiting the usefulness of such high-throughput tools to only a screening function," said Dr. Andrey Zarur, CEO and President, BioProcessors. "This paradox is clearly visible in the area of cell culture where 96 well plates and shake flasks are used as high-throughput screens for cell line selection, media and process optimization. In all but the simplest of processes these systems are at best only a crude approximation of a working bioreactor and hence provide little reliably scalable cell culture process information. Poor scalability and, in the case of shake flasks, insufficient experimental power to provide complete full factorial process development DOEs limits researchers ‘real-time' ability to identify robust processes capable of operating at their global optima," Dr. Zarur added. BioProcessors SimCell MicroBioreactors address this process development "data gap" by integrating microfluidics with remote monitoring and control, enabling high-throughput process development through the miniaturization of bioreactors that accurately simulate full scale manufacturing processes.

SOURCE: BioProcessors