Sartorius Stedim Biotech and GE Healthcare Life Sciences Sign Agreement for Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Technologies

Sartorius Stedim Biotech (Aubagne, France) has entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement with GE Healthcare Life Sciences (Chalfont St. Giles, UK). This will enable the further development of each company’s current and future biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.

“Signing this agreement represents our mutual respect for intellectual property. In the immediate term it will enable us to employ the technologies covered by the patents in the license agreements to further advance the controls of single use devices,” said Catarina Flyborg, general manager, bioprocess products at GE Healthcare Life Sciences. “Furthermore, our customers will profit from the freedom to employ these proprietary control mechanisms, without violating patent rights, when sourced from either GE Healthcare Life Sciences or Sartorius Stedim Biotech.”

Reinhard Vogt, executive vice president of marketing, sales and services, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, commented, “Like GE Healthcare Life Sciences, we have primarily entered into these license agreements for the benefit of our customers. The agreement will enable both our companies to provide a greater selection of products as well as accelerate the development of new and innovative technologies for applications in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry.”

Under the agreement, Sartorius Stedim Biotech has granted GE Healthcare Life Sciences a sublicense to certain patents held by the University of Maryland (UMBC; College Park, USA) to which Sartorius Stedim Biotech has access under an exclusive license agreement with Fluorometrix, a spin-off of UMBC. These patent rights cover bioreactors with at least two optical sensors for monitoring biotechnologic manufacturing processes. GE Healthcare Life Sciences has granted Sartorius Stedim Biotech a sublicense to patent rights that it has licensed from SciLog, Inc. (Middleton, WI, USA), a leading innovator in automated and single-use purification systems as well as disposable sensor technology. These patent rights cover proprietary technologies for the automated, aseptic transfer of solutions in bioprocessing applications. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Sartorius Stedim Biotech is a provider of cutting-edge equipment and services for the development, quality assurance, and production processes of the biopharmaceutical industry. Its integrated solutions covering fermentation, filtration, purification, fluid management, and lab technologies are supporting the biopharmaceutical industry worldwide to develop and produce drugs safely, timely, and economically. Sartorius Stedim Biotech focuses on single-use technologies and value-added services to meet the rapidly changing technology requirements of the industry it serves.

GE Healthcare’s expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help their customers across the healthcare spectrum deliver better services at lower cost.

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