GE Healthcare Life Sciences and Promosome Sign Licensing Agreement

Innovative mammalian cell line development technologies that show promise for increasing manufacturing efficiency of vital biopharmaceuticals

GE Healthcare Life Sciences, and Promosome LLC recently announced that the companies have signed a licensing agreement, granting GE Healthcare exclusive rights to an innovative suite of mammalian cell line development technologies, developed by Promosome, for increasing protein expression in mammalian cell culture. Under the terms of agreement, Promosome will receive milestone payments for technology transfer and subsequent royalties upon commercialization.

Mammalian cell culture plays a key role in the manufacture of biotherapeutic proteins for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as the new generation of vaccines. GE Healthcare already offers a wide range of start-to-finish technologies and services for the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry. In-licensing of Promosome’s cell line development technologies will enable GE Healthcare Life Sciences to expand its offering with a cell-line generation service focused on delivering increased expression levels for hard-to-manufacture therapeutic proteins and improving manufacturing efficiency through increased protein yields.

Morgan Norris, General Manager for Upstream Products, BioProcess, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: “The biopharmaceutical industry is constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency and increase flexibility. Promosome’s technologies provide a powerful way to drive up protein yields and, more excitingly, boost the output of cell lines for hard-to-express proteins to a level where large-scale manufacturing becomes viable and previously disregarded therapies can be progressed.”

John Manzello, President and CEO of Promosome, added: “This agreement represents a significant commercial milestone for Promosome. We are excited to be working closely with the team at GE Healthcare to transfer our technology to their in-house experts. GE Healthcare is ideally positioned to deliver our technology to the global biopharmaceutical industry.”

GE Healthcare recently acquired Thermo Fisher’s HyClone™ cell culture media and sera allowing GE to expand its offering of start-to-finish technologies for the discovery and manufacturing of innovative new medicines and vaccines. In 2012 the company launched KUBio™, an off-the-shelf modular factory for the manufacture of monoclonal antibodies.