Avitide Secures Financing for Novel Affinity Purification Platform

Biotech company Avitide announced on Aug. 4, 2015, that it has closed its Series C financing for its novel bioprocessing platform, which Avitide says will drastically reduce bioprocessing and manufacturing timelines. The funding will be used to "accelerate commercialization of Avitide’s on-demand affinity purification platform, with a focus on biopharmaceutical drug products that include an array of molecules such as proteins, enzymes, antibody-based therapeutics, recombinant vaccines, gene therapies and biosimilars," according to a press release.

“At first, we were skeptical that a highly conservative industry would adopt a new purification technology so quickly, but once we saw the data on partnered programs, we were convinced that Avitide had something transformative," said Claudio Nessi of NeoMed Management, the company that led the financing initiative, in a press release.

Avitide’s platform, initially developed at Dartmouth College, is based on highly selective affinity resins for the separation of biotherapeutics. The founders for the technology have roots in other assorted biotechnology companies, including Arsanis, GlycoFi, Adimab, Merck, and Glycan Biosciences.

The high cost of Protein-A resins and the numerous chromatography steps that are involved in the process of purification have prompted some companies, such as Avitide, to explore a more cost-effective downstream alternative to the current industry standards for protein purification. Unlike other chromatography systems, which are based on recombinant proteins, Avitide’s affinity resin is made via chemical synthesis.

Source: BusinessWire