Company Announcements

Bio-Works, which designs, develops, manufactures and supplies agarose products for chromatographic separation of proteins, peptides and other biomolecules, completed an IPO in December 2017 on the Nasdaq First North stock exchange in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2017, sales rose 34.5% to SEK 4.9 million ($0.6 million). Operating loss amounted to SEK 23.8. million ($2.8 million), up from SEK 17.1 million ($2.0 million) (see Bottom Line). Orders grew 85%.

In March, Bio-Works announced the opening of a sales office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

ChromaCon named YMC as a distributor for Japan in February. In March, ChromaCon entered into an agreement with YMC India for distribution in India.

ChromaCon and distributor ES Technologies established a training center in Shanghai, China, in March.

Repligen’s 2017 sales grew 35.1% to $141.2 million (see IBO 2/28/18), including 9% organic growth. Adjusted operating profit rose 34.0% to $31.6 million. Sales of Protein products fell 1.4%, Filtration products sales grew 148.1%, Chromatography products revenue increased 23.0% and Other sales grew 308.6% to represent 38%, 35%, 26% and 1% of revenues, respectively.  Sales of direct-to-customer products in filtration and chromatography rose 19% organically. In total, direct sales represented 62% of total revenues, up from 48%. GE Healthcare and MilliporeSigma accounted for 21% and 18% of revenues, respectively. In 2018, revenues are expected to grow 27%–32% to $180–$186 million, reflecting a 26%–31% increase on a constant currency basis, including 10%–14% organic growth.

In March, BIA Separations entered into a partnership agreement with Nuvonis Technologies to offer a combination of Nuvonis’ Vero cell bank with BIA Separation’s CIM monolithic column purification products. The offering meets the growing demand for vaccine and gene therapy production, and tackles the technical challenges associated with managing the upstream-downstream process interface.

In March, Nanologica entered into a service agreement with contract development and manufacturing organization Sterling Pharma Solutions for the large-scale production of its NLAB Saga chromatography media for preparative chromatography.

DataApex announced in March an OEM agreement with distributor Hangzhou Welch Scientific Instruments for China.

In March, Akzo Nobel announced the sale of its Specialty Chemicals business, which includes the Kromasil LC packing materials business, to The Carlyle Group and GIC for €10.1 billion ($12.5 billion). The transaction is expected to close by year end.

TriAltus Bioscience announced in March the licensing of a novel protein purification platform, which works by isolating proteins in a single purification step, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham for commercialization.

Product Introductions

Gilson launched in February the standalone VERITY 3011 Isocratic Pump for the VERITY purification system. The pump enables reaction monitoring and easily integrates into both analytical and semi-preparative chromatography systems. The pump supports pressures up to 600 bar, with the 5 SS pump head for flow rates of 0.01–5 mL/minute and the 10 SS pump head for 0.05–10 mL/minute.

Kromasil announced in February that it is now shipping its SFC column in cyano, diol, silica, 2-ethylpyridine and organo-silane chemistries.

In March, Chiral Technologies, part of DAICEL, released the CHIRALPAK IH immobilized chiral stationary phase column.

YMC America introduced in March the 3 µm Chiral ART Cellulose-SJ column, which joins the 5 µm version. for both SFC and HPLC.

In March, Repligen launched the OPUS 80R column, calling it the largest pre-packed column on the market. It is suitable for late-stage clinical into commercial-scale manufacturing of biological drugs.

In April, Phenomenex debuted the bioZen Series of LC solutions for bioseparations in pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and academic research. The Series encompasses core ­shell and thermally modified fully porous media, and features new biocompatible titanium hardware. The initial bioZen product line features seven chemistries for the UHPLC and HPLC. The offering includes specific LC chemistries for the analysis of aggregates and total mAb, intact mass and fragments, peptide mapping and quantitation and glycan mapping.

Sales and Orders of Note

In March, HempAmericana, a rolling paper and cannabidiol oil business, announced the purchase of a Gilson CPC 1000 centrifugal partition chromatography separator system with a PLC 2500 HPLC+UV Detector.