Novasep and instrAction Expand Alliance to Include Taxane Purification

POMPEY, France and LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany, February 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

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Novasep, a leading supplier of manufacturing solutions to the life science industries, and instrAction, a manufacturer of innovative chromatographic stationary phases for API purification processes, today announce they have expanded their worldwide strategic alliance to include the purification of taxanes, a well-known class of anti-cancer compounds.

This extended collaboration enables Novasep to develop and operate or supply optimized large-scale chromatography processes for cost-effective purification of taxane-based active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates. The two companies announced a strategic alliance covering non-chiral chromatography in July 2010. The extended relationship means Novasep adds enhanced taxane capabilities to its extensive range of manufacturing solutions for life science industries. Novasep customers will benefit from the collaboration as they will be able to access a cost-effective one-step purification solution for their taxane-based APIs.

instrAction has synthesized API-selective stationary phases among their 3,000-phase library based on its proprietary technology, which have shown a strong potential for taxane purification. Novasep can develop a multi-step synthesis and optimize purification steps using instrAction's set of taxane-selective chromatographic stationary phases. Novasep can then scale up the optimized process and produce the API for clinical and commercial purposes. Alternatively, Novasep can supply the developed process to its customers with performance guarantees, integrating Novasep's leading Prochrom(R) HPLC columns and systems and instrAction's selective stationary phases. For mature or generic APIs, Novasep and instrAction can additionally file and license application patents to extend the protection of their customers' products.

Novasep develops and manufactures taxane-based APIs and advanced intermediates at its FDA inspected and SafeBridge certified Le Mans site in France, specialized in highly potent API (HPAPI) synthesis and purification.

"Thanks to instrAction's highly selective chromatographic stationary phases and Novasep's 20 years experience in taxane synthesis and purification, we are looking to see a paradigm shift in solutions for our customers worldwide as a result of this collaboration," says Rene De Vaumas, executive vice president in charge of Novasep Synthesis' business development.

"We are delighted about our extended collaboration with Novasep, a leader in taxane synthesis and purification," said Dr. Thomas Schwarz, CEO of instrAction GmbH. "It is a further important milestone to implement the instrAction technology in industrial downstream processes. We are very confident that it will be broadly applied to the industrial purification of APIs in the future."

About Novasep

Novasep develops, markets and operates innovative technologies providing life science industries with safe and cost-effective production of active molecules. The global manufacturing solutions offered by Novasep include process development services; purification equipment and systems; contract manufacturing services; and complex active molecules. The applications of Novasep's offering cover the pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, food, functional ingredients and bio-industries markets.

http://www.novasep.com

About instrAction

instrAction, founded in 1997 by Dr. Klaus Gottschall and located at the BASF site in Ludwigshafen, develops and manufactures "Instruction(R) Receptor Phases" as novel API-selective resins for chromatography. The Instruction(R) technology enables the immobilization of a wide variety of functional ligands on a polymer network, coated on very different porous backbone materials. Small molecules as well as substances with high molecular weight are separated by highly selective reversible interactions. The high selectivity of an instrAction stationary phase is thereby reached by multivalent-multimodal interactions between target molecule and the functional ligands of the phase, similar to the lock-and-key principle.

http://www.instraction.com