Company Announcements

In December 2016, Univercells, which designs single-use bioprocess solutions, Batavia Biosciences and Natrix Separations received a $12 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a breakthrough vaccine manufacturing platform with the objective of lowering costs, and increasing vaccine availability and affordability in developing countries. The platform will integrate continuous processing with extremely high process intensification, and incorporate Natrix’s single-use chromatography membrane platform.

Full-year 2016 Repligen sales jumped 25.1%, 22% organically, to $104.5 million (see IBO 3/15/17), driven by strong demand for chromatography and filtration products for bioprocessing applications. Acquisitions contributed roughly 4% to revenue growth. Adjusted operating margin contracted 84 basis points to 20.5% due to operational investments, including manufacturing capacity. The company projected 2017 sales of $121–$126 million for growth of 16%–21%, or 11%–16% organically.

Production Introductions

Waters added in December 2016 four new preparative SFC columns to its Torus SFC column line. The new achiral columns are designed for purification labs scaling up their separations of investigatory drug compounds, natural products and synthetic chemicals.

In January, Abbkine Scientific released Purkine Heparin Resin 6FF for purifying a variety of heparin-binding proteins. It is available in prepacked kit formats and spin columns.

W. L. Gore & Associates launched in January a new line of GORE Protein Capture Devices with Protein A for drug discovery and research applications. They feature a unique expanded PTFE membrane composite, and are available in 1.0 mL and 3.5 mL sizes.

In January, Gilson announced the availability of the GX-241 Liquid Handler as an optional autosampler for its PLC 2050 and PLC 2250 Purification Systems.

In March, Metrohm released a new line of columns for common anion analysis by various EPA methods.

In March, Phenomenex expanded its Kinetex core shell and Luna Omega fully porous media offering to a new 1 mm ID microbore format, which is compatible with micro LC systems.

Phenomenex introduced in March a new 5 µm particle size to its family of Kinetex F5 PFP core shell columns, extending the versatility of F5 to preparative LC and purification work. They are now available in three particle sizes.

Thermo Fisher Scientific unveiled in March the Thermo Scientific Dionex IonPac AS23-4µm analytical and guard columns, which provide advanced capabilities to detect oxyhalides and common inorganic anions. The company also released the Thermo Scientific Dionex IonPac CS20 IC columns, designed to offer choice performance for the analysis of inorganic cations and amines.

In March, Postnova Analytics launched a new temperature-controlled AF2000 flow field-flow fractionation MALS (MultiAngle Light Scattering) system, offering separation over a very broad molar mass and particle size range