SubscribeAlmac Sciences has invested an additional £500,000 in its multi-kilo GMP peptide production facilities at the company's sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The move means Almac now has full capability for highly flexible, milligrams-to-kilos peptide manufacturing.
The latest investment further consolidates Almac's reputation in the synthesis of long peptides and the GMP manufacture of small molecules. The synthesis and purification techniques that the company has devised to make GMP peptides of up to 170 amino acids in length are now being applied to clinical trial candidates of all sizes.
Investment at the company's site at Craigavon, Northern Ireland has included automated peptide synthesis equipment, preparative HPLC and a freeze drying suite. New equipment for small scale peptide synthesis has also been added to the inventory of Almac Sciences' production and R&D centre near Edinburgh. The sites are served by a combined team of over 20 peptide scientists.
"This latest investment package marks a significant addition to our suite of peptide capabilities, taking Almac Sciences into the 'GMP at any length and any scale' class," said VP Commercial Operations Dr. David Moody.
"This investment delivers our objective to provide customers with a mix of niche and mainstream offerings, from drug discovery stage services to large-scale production between which they can make their own connections. The supply of peptide-cytotoxic conjugates is a recent example of this connected service in action," he added.
Senior Business Manager for Peptides Programmes, Denis Geffroy, said: "This is a timely and important development for our customers. Application of Almac technology to the whole peptide space brings compelling quality, cost of goods and response time benefits to a new family of customers."
Almac Sciences' expanded range of peptide products and services includes a wide range of site specifically labeled and native chemokines, rapid supply of high quality custom peptides for antibody production, and milligrams-to-kilos scale supply of custom peptides under GMP for clinical trials
Previous 2006 developments:
The GMP peptide development is the latest in a series this year. Almac Sciences introduced its Carbon-14 radiolabelling services commercially at InformexUSA in February. It can now radiolabel compounds at any stage between drug discovery and launch, including small molecules, peptides, oligos, cytotoxics and conjugates.
Also at Informex USA, the division launched its Chiral Building Blocks Package - which was further extended in April, just ahead of CPhI Japan, with the addition of (S)-Phenylbutyric acid.
The new range comes from the company's work on bio-catalysis, both internally (Quinuclidinols) and in collaboration with IEP - covering Propylene Carbonate and Styrene Oxide, with Propylene Carbonate now ready for manufacture. These developments mark another success story for The Chiral Consortium, which the company co-founded in 2004. The other players are chemo-catalysis specialist ChiralQuest, of the US, and Germany's bio-catalytic reduction technology leaders IEP.
Almac Sciences has a long established tradition in contract R&D, custom manufacturing, and analytical services. In recent years, this strong base has been augmented with speciality offerings; peptides, protein and oligo synthesis; cytotoxic and potent manufacturing; manufacture of chirals; radiolabelling - and now large scale GMP peptide manufacturing.
18th October 2006