DSM Biologics to Acquire Rhobust Technology from Upfront Chromatography

DSM Biologics (Parsippany, NJ), a business unit of DSM Pharmaceutical products, has reached an agreement for the acquisition of the assets and associated business of the Rhobust technology from Upfront Chromatography A/S (Copenhagen, Denmark) for pharmaceutical and other applications.

DSM Biologics will gain all rights for the commercialization of the Rhobust technology in various fields, including the pharmaceutical industry. DSM Biologics will continue to support all existing clients for this technology. Financial details were not disclosed.

Upfront’s Rhobust technology consists of cross-linked Tungsten Carbide—agarose beads to increase the density of the particles. This increased density leads to stable expanded bed adsorption chromatography. Compared to a conventional harvest approach, the number of unit operations is reduced. The cells are separated in one step while capturing the protein or antibody of interest. In the expanded bed adsorption chromatography (EBA) the cell suspension passes through the column and the product is adsorbed either on Protein A or on mixed-mode ligand beads. This leads to less handling and shorter process times.