Avacta and Pall Life Sciences in analytical services collaboration

21 June 2011

Avacta Group plc, a provider of analytics and diagnostics services,  has entered into a collaborative venture with Pall Corporation, a provider of filtration, separation and purification systems, to deliver a market leading analytical service to biopharmaceutical developers.
 
Under the terms of the collaboration Pall will utilise the services of Avacta and market joint services with a focus in North America, and in certain other regions globally where Avacta is not currently represented.

Pall’s expertise in developing high yield purification processes for biopharmaceutical compounds is well recognised but the current state-of-the-art in process optimisation is enhanced by more information on how the structure and stability of compounds are affected by manufacturing or purification processes. Avacta’s analytical capabilities provide a significant value add in this, and other areas, ensuring Pall’s analytical service offering is the most comprehensive option for its customers involved in drug development.
 
The combined services are aimed at reducing drug development risk by giving customers greater insight into the effects of their manufacturing processes. They will leverage Avacta’s expertise in analysis at the very early stages in drug development to provide customers with new opportunities to screen molecules early on, for their manufacturability as well as their functional properties.
 
The US biopharmaceuticals market is worth around $100bn and the provision of contract services into this rapidly growing sector is worth several billion dollars annually. Together the two companies will provide a market leading analytical service to assist biological drug developers reduce the costs of drug development through improved compound screening and optimisation of manufacturing and purification conditions. The services will be delivered through Pall’s Scientific Laboratories Services global network and through Avacta at its laboratories in York, United Kingdom.
 
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta Group commented: "Avacta’s commercial partnership with Pall has, since inception, been intended as a wider and more strategic collaboration than just a distribution deal for our Optim technology. This services collaboration is the next step in the development of that partnership which gives Avacta an excellent route to market in the US and a new offering with the combined strength of the two companies’ analytical services. Optim itself will be used to deliver some aspects of our unique services and exposure through services provision should help expand awareness of Optim product and consequently to drive unit sales and consumables usage in the future.”
 
Ken Frank Senior Vice President of Pall Corporation and President of Pall’s Biopharmaceutical Division commented: “This development in our collaboration with Avacta further strengthens Pall’s position in providing leading, innovative solutions for biomolecular processes. We believe that we will help our customers, with better information provided by these services, to improve their decision making and save valuable time in the critically important job of getting new products to market.”