Chromos Enters into Agreement with Centocor For Development of Cell Lines For Production of Therapeutic Proteins

20-Aug-2004

Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Chromos Molecular Systems Inc. announced that is has entered into a collaborative agreement with Centocor Inc., of Malvern, Pennsylvania, a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, to develop cell lines using the Artificial Chromosome Expression (ACE) System for potential use in the clinical and commercial manufacture of two undisclosed therapeutic proteins.

Under the Centocor-funded collaboration, Chromos will engineer cell lines specific for the expression of two of Centocor's therapeutic proteins using the ACE System. Centocor has the option to use the cell lines for scale up and manufacture of the proteins, following the research phase of the agreement. The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

"This alliance is very significant for Chromos because Centocor is recognized as an industry leader in developing and commercializing innovative biopharmaceuticals," said Alistair Duncan, President and CEO of Chromos. "We have successfully applied the ACE technology to improve the quality and productivity of a range of production cell lines, and we look forward to working with Centocor to optimize production of their therapeutic proteins."

The foundation of Chromos' technology is its proprietary ACE System, a chromosome-based gene delivery and expression platform. The ACE System enables the rapid engineering of high-quality cell lines for production of proteins. Unique features of the ACE System is that it allows "auditioning" the expression capabilities of several cell lines in a short time. In this instance, an artificial chromosome that has already been loaded with a product gene can be isolated from its host cell and readily transferred to any number of other cell lines that may offer an advantage with respect to growth, expression or quality of product. This versatility allows one to easily evaluate numerous lines using the same engineered chromosome, eliminating the need to generate those cells from scratch. Together these unique features of the ACE Systems provides the opportunity to significantly improve the economics of production.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/39177/chromos-enters-into-agreement-with-centocor-for-development-of-cell-lines-for-production-of-therapeutic-proteins.html