GE Healthcare Introduces Innovative New Platform For Biopharmaceutical Production

Main Category: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Also Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Article Date: 04 Oct 2007 - 2:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare introduced a new portfolio of ready-to-use systems and devices designed for biopharmaceutical production. The ReadyToProcessTM portfolio is a range of products 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.

The new line of products is being showcased at the 13th annual IBC Bioprocess International Conference & Exhibition in Boston.

The products available today with ReadyToProcess features include single-use WAVETM technologies, a set of newly developed, ready to use filtration and soon to be available chromatography tools.

"The ReadyToProcess Platform will be an obvious choice for customers looking to increase early-stage project throughput and later-stage biopharmaceutical manufacturing flexibility," said Ann O'Hara, general manager of BioProcess at GE Healthcare Lifesciences. "The growth of our ReadyToProcess products will help customers minimize the amount of time spent on preparation and changeover activities."

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 reduce training and certification of employees due to the convenience of a ready to use format.

As the first example, the WAVE disposable technologies have provided a strong foundation for ReadyToProcess products in the market by removing hours of cleaning and preparation in cell culture, and improving the environment for gentle, consistent mixing. And as shown today, the new filtration and chromatography offerings attack the same removal of cleaning, validation and training requires in the downstream area.

"These are just the first steps in a long term commitment to continue the development of ReadyToProcess bioprocessing tools that enable lean production schemes and can lead the way to fully flexible manufacturing facilities. The future is unpredictable, the best we can do is to prepare our customers for more flexible manufacturing methods with the ReadyToProcess tools, services and product solutions," said O'Hara.

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.

http://www.gehealthcare.com.