Today, Pfēnex, Inc. announced a non-exclusive partnership with SAFC, under which Pfēnex will support the engineering of strains and processes for SAFC’s biopharmaceutical fermentation business, strengthening capabilities in the areas of microbial strain engineering and the production of complex protein therapeutics and bioconjugation. By pairing Pfēnex’s cutting edge expression technology with the broad range of ingredients and world-class CMO services and facilities of SAFC, the partnership aims to facilitate more comprehensive and time sensitive vaccine development and production for clinical phase trials; both companies are excited about the expansion of capabilities through working together.
A follow up interview with Bill Taylor, Director, Business Development & Commercial Operations of Pfēnex will be available later this week. And next week, an interview with Mark Cassidy, VP of SAFC will go live. These interviews will cover more in-depth detail of this partnership and the benefits it will provide from the perspective of both companies.
Pfēnex Inc. Announces Strategic Agreement with SAFC
Strategic Alliance will strengthen technology capabilities in the areas of microbial strain engineering, production of complex protein therapeutics and bioconjugation
Pfēnex Inc., an industry leader in protein expression through the Pfēnex Expression Technology™ platform, announced today that it has entered into a non-exclusive strategic partnership with SAFC®, a unit of the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (NASDAQ:SIAL) and a global leader in biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing. Under the agreement, Pfēnex Inc. will engineer production strains and processes for SAFC’s contract manufacturing customers, and the developed processes will ultimately be transferred to SAFC’s recently expanded fermentation facility in Jerusalem, Israel for cGMP production.
In addition, the companies plan to work together to combine Pfēnex’s Reagent Proteins product offerings in the area of vaccine components with SAFC’s expertise and facilities for bioconjugation to support development of conjugate vaccines.
This collaboration is expected to provide SAFC and the biotechnology community with access to an industry-leading expression platform, a comprehensive range of vaccine carrier proteins, and enable preclinical and clinical development to progress much more quickly and efficiently.
“Our partnership agreement with SAFC combines a cutting edge expression technology and a broad offering of vaccine components with a world class contract manufacturing services provider, facilitating the speed and reliability with which important new drugs can be brought to patients.” said Dr Bertrand Liang, CEO of Pfēnex Inc.
“Providing our customers access to Pfenex’s expression system is a valuable addition to our complex technology portfolio,” said Mark Cassidy, Vice President of SAFC’s Contract Manufacturing Services. “This alliance reinforces SAFC’s commitment to bringing our customers the latest technological solutions in the advancement of biopharmaceutical manufacturing.”
