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Biobusiness Company to Maintain Independence and Operate as Life Sciences Unit of Parker Hannifin Carol Potera Things have been happening recently at SciLog (www.scilog.com), a manufacturer of automated liquid-handling equipment for protein purification. In March the company moved to a larger building in Madison, WI. Then in August, it was acquired by Parker Hannifin (www. parker.com), a global supplier of motion and control technologies. According to Juliette Schick, Ph.D., CEO and president of SciLog, her company will serve as the life sciences unit of Parker Hannifin. Schick adds that the company will continue to sell its own products and operate independently, with SciLog's management team staying in place. "[The acquisition agreement gives Scilog] access to global markets, distribution chan- nels, and resources to maximize Scilog's single-use product offerings and patent posi- tions," she says. Juliette and Karl Schick started SciLog in 1990 in the basement of their home. Juliette, then a professor of business at the Univer- sity of Wisconsin, Madison, performed an academic exercise that showed a need for laboratory liquid-handling equipment that could easily interface with printers, balances, sensors, and other devices. Karl Schick, Ph.D., a biochemist and in- ventor, created the first automated liquid- handling instruments with user-friendly, em- bedded software. "Back then, computers were DOS-based with limited memory, and instruments were difficult to interface. The idea of plug-and- play didn't even exist for lab equipment," says Juliette. SciLog researchers wrote their own soft- ware to make lab equipment more pro- ductive and able to interface with printers, scales, and pressure sensors. The company's first customers were automated laboratories at universities that performed polymer syn- thesis and food sampling and preparation in test labs. Three Product Families Today SciLog has three complemen- tary product families—laboratory liquid- NEWS Inside Industry > Merck Serono Spins Out Biomarker Informatics Business Merck Serono has spun out a bioin- formatics firm, Quartz Bio, to provide biomarker data management and ex- ploratory biomarker analysis services to the pharma industry. The new firm is the second created through Merck Serono's Entrepreneur Partnership Program (EPP), which was launched in April. The EPP initiative is part of the firm's €30 million (approximately $37.7 mil- lion) drive to support the establishment of spin-out and start-up firms based on technologies and compounds developed in-house. Merck Serono says spinning out promising IP will reduce the burden on its existing employees, given the re- cent closure of its Geneva headquarters as part of a major restructuring program. The EPP has already led to creation of Par- kinson's disease therapeutics firm Prex- ton Therapeutics at the end of July. Quartz Bio will be hosted at the Blue Box offices of FONGIT, a start-up acceler- ate in Geneva, which is supported by the local authorities. Merck Serono says it will itself use the services provided by Quartz Bio, and expects to put around €2 million (around $2.5 million)-worth of work the firm's way over the next 2–3 years. > Grant Awarded for Listeria-Based Cancer Vaccine Aduro BioTech won a $867,846 grant through the DoD's Congressionally Di- rected Medical Research Programs ini- tiative to complete preclinical develop- ment of a live-attenuated Listeria mono- cytogenes–based therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer. The grant will be used to generate Listeria strains that express a combination of tumor-associated pros- tate cancer antigens, which the firm says should help increase the likelihood that vaccination will trigger broader, more ef- fective immune responses. The funds will also support evaluation of candidate vaccine strains in animal models, and toxicology and manufactur- ing of the lead strain in preparation for IND application. > EC Clears First Drug for Short Bowel Syndrome The EC approved Takeda and NPS Pharmaceuticals' recombinant human glucagon-like peptide 2 (GLP-2) analog Revestive® (teduglutide) as a once-daily treatment for adults with short bowel syndrome (SBS). The drug is the first to be approved for this indication in Europe. Regulatory clearance was based on data from the placebo-controlled Phase III Steps study in 43 SBS patients who re- quired parenteral nutrition. Data showed that treatment with teduglutide more than doubled the percentage of patients who achieved a 20% to 100% reduction in parenteral nutrition at week 20 and 24, and reduced the volume of parenteral nutrition required by 4.4 liters per week. 54% of patients receiving teduglutide achieved an at least one-day reduction in parenteral nutrition, versus 23% of place- bo-treated patients. NPS Pharmaceuticals granted Ny- comed (which was acquired by Takeda in September 2011) rights to develop and commercialize teduglutide outside the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Israel in 2007. NPS retains all rights to the drug in North America, and submitted an NDA to FDA in November 2011, under the trade name Gattex®. > Radiation Syndrome Cell Therapy Gets $36.4M Boost Cellerant Therapeutics won a $36.4 million Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) grant to support advanced development of allogeneic cell-based therapy CLT- 008, for the treatment of acute radiation 14 | October 1, 2012 | genengnews.com | Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News syndrome (ARS). This third year of fund- ing follows on from $80 million already awarded over an initial two years, and is part of a five-year award that could be worth $169.9 million. CLT-008 is an off-the-shelf cryopre- served cell-based therapy comprising human myeloid progenitor cells derived from hematopoietic stem cells, which can mature in vivo into functional granu- locytes, platelets, and red blood cells. For ARS applications the product is expected to provide hematopoietic cell support after exposure to ionizing radiation. Cel- lerant says preclinical studies suggest a single dose could effectively treat ARS in an emergency situation, even when ad- ministered up to five days post-exposure. > Charles River Buys Accugenix for $17M Charles River Laboratories acquired cGMP contract microbial identification and typing firm Accugenix for $17 million in cash. Charles River says the buyout will strengthen its own endotoxin and micro- bial detection (EMD) product portfolio by providing clients with microbial detec- tion services for manufacturing in the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and other sectors. Q SciLog, which began operations in 1990, provides sensor technology and automated lab-scale and production systems for the biopharmaceutical industry. CORPORATE PROFILE SciLog Sees Big Promise in Acquisition handling systems, GMP process-scale sys- tems, and precalibrated, single-use sensors. SciLog's lab systems automate high preci- sion, liquid-handling applications, such as metering, dispensing, protein purification, filtering, and testing. In response to customer requests, these lab systems were scaled-up to accommodate larger flow rates and integrated devices for See SciLog on page 16