GE Healthcare Launches Sterile Genderless Connector For Disposable Biopharmaceutical Production

Main Category: Medical Devices
Also Included In: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 25 Mar 2008 - 14:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric (NYSE: GE), launched of a range of sterile genderless connectors as part of its ReadyToProcess™ portfolio of ready-to-use bioprocessing systems. GE Healthcare has acquired exclusive rights to the Disposable Aseptic Connector (DAC) developed by BioQuate Inc, and is now a key component in GE Healthcare's fully disposable technology offering.

The DAC launch furthers GE Healthcare's commitment to increasing efficiency and decreasing time-to-market for customers by eliminating cleaning and validation steps through use of its ready-to-use and single use disposable technologies in biomanufacturing. The genderless DAC reduces complexity for customers by reducing parts inventory and requires no unique operator skills, power, calibration, or servicing.

The licensing deal includes further agreements with Pall Corporation, settling Pall Corporation's patent infringement lawsuit with BioQuate Inc. GE Healthcare and Pall have entered into mutual patent licensing agreements that will enable both companies to further develop their respective disposable connective technologies.

"These agreements build on our acquisition of Wave Biotech and our launch of the ReadyToProcess portfolio. With our ready-to-use offering, we're committing to saving customers' time, operating expenses and increasing speed, flexibility and capacity of production," said Nigel Darby, Chief Technology Officer, Life Sciences, GE Healthcare.

"I am very pleased to join forces with GE Healthcare to bring genderless, disposable aseptic connectors to the market. GE Healthcare has a significant history in the market and will provide a vehicle to bring our DAC connection technology to a broad range of applications as well as providing a worldwide channel to the biotech market," said Ted Johnson, CEO BioQuate.

GE Healthcare's new ReadyToProcess portfolio is designed to meet the biopharmaceutical industry's need for increased speed, simplicity and safety for all areas of bioprocessing, from cell culture and fermentation to final purification. As part of GE Healthcare's strategic development of disposable and ready-to-use biopharmaceutical processing technologies, the products available today in the ReadyToProcess portfolio include single-use WAVE TM technologies and a set of newly-developed, ready-to-use filtration and chromatography tools.

ReadyToProcess technologies allow considerable advantages over conventional methods used in bioprocessing, including: higher project throughput and shorter time-to-market due to the elimination of cleaning and cleaning validation steps, elimination of cross contamination problems and reduced training and certification of employees due to the convenience of a ready-to-use format.

About Bioquate

BioQuate is a privately held Florida corporation that provides today's biopharm industry with patented, innovative disposable devices that improve fluid throughput and maintain sterile system integrity. The core competency of BioQuate is in developing genderless connection platforms to meet specific needs within the industry.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

GE Healthcare