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GE HEALTHCARE AND
BAC ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC COLLABORATION
IN BIOPHARMACEUTICAL PURIFICATION
Chalfont St.
Giles, UK and Naarden, The Netherlands, October 19 2006 – GE Healthcare, a
unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), and BAC BV , the Bio Affinity
Company, announced today that they have entered into a strategic collaboration
in the affinity ligand and chromatographic media area. Under the terms of the
agreement, the two companies will develop new affinity chromatography media for
human antibodies and adeno-associated virus (AAV) viral vector purification. The
first products are expected to be commercially available during 2007 through GE
Healthcare’s Custom Designed Media business. The collaboration is expected to
generate several new innovative affinity chromatography media solutions for
biopharmaceutical manufacture and drug discovery research.
“This collaboration will allow us to expand our current range of ligand
technologies and libraries, enabling us to develop more efficient purification
processes for our customers in biopharmaceutical manufacturing,” said Ann
O’Hara, General Manager of BioProcess for GE Healthcare.
“As a well established market leader, GE Healthcare is the perfect partner for
us,” said Dr. Laurens Sierkstra, CEO of BAC. “This Agreement underlines their
confidence in our CaptureSelect® products and clearly validates our technology
as a giant step forward in the purification of pharmaceutical products. “
- ENDS -
ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that are shaping a
new age of patient care. GE Healthcare’s expertise in medical imaging and
information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring and life
support systems, disease research, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical
manufacturing technologies is helping physicians detect disease earlier and
tailor personalized treatments for their patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad
range of products and services that are improving productivity in healthcare and
enhancing patient care by enabling healthcare providers to better diagnose and
treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases, and other conditions.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $15 billion unit of
General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than
43,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients
in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our
website at
www.gehealthcare.com .
ABOUT BAC
BAC BV – The Bio Affinity Company – offers unique products for affinity
purification. These CaptureSelect® products, based on proprietary single domain
antibody fragments, are efficiently produced in-house using Saccharomyces
cerevisiae. CaptureSelect® products possess a combination of unique properties
such as stability, affinity and selectivity that provides competitive benefits
in terms of reduced cost of purification, higher quality product and increased
flexibility in the purification process. BAC BV, a Unilever spin-off, was
established in 1995, with an R&D laboratory facility in Vlaardingen and a
state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Naarden, the Netherlands. Currently the
company employs 28 people.
For more information about BAC, visit our website at
www.bac.nl
. For more information about CaptureSelect® products, visit our website at
www.captureselect.com
For more information, please contact:
Northbank Communications
Ben Routley / Eva Levin
T: +44 (0) 1260 296 500 / +44 (0)20 3008 7550
b.routley@northbankcommunications.com
e.levin@northbankcommunications.com
BAC B.V.
Ingeborg van Gemeren
+31 (0) 10 460 5824
ingeborg-van.gemeren@bac.nl
GE Healthcare
Val Jones
+44 (0) 7917 175 192
val.jones@ge.com
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