Alpha announces new UK R&D and process development base

Alpha Biologics, supplier of contract biomanufacturing services, today announced the opening of new process development laboratories at the Babraham Research Park in Cambridge, UK.

The company recently completed building an $18m manufacturing plant in Penang, Malaysia for the cGMP production of mammalian cell proteins. Now, in a further step, it has opened new UK labs designed to provide customers with services at earlier stages of the manufacturing process. These range from R&D and bioprocess development through to scale-up and optimisation of the biomanufacturing process. The new laboratories are based within Babraham's new, ultra-modern Maia biomedical complex. Michelle Peake, Alpha's COO said:

"Our key focus is on the manufacture of monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins - though clients may sometimes want whole cells, membrane fractions or other specified products. The UK labs have been designed to be flexible, so they can cope with any of these needs - they will suit researchers just starting to develop a biomanufacturing process all the way through to those preparing clinical trial materials".

"Once bioprocesses are optimised, they are transferred elsewhere for full-scale manufacture - that can either be at our own cGMP manufacturing plant, or other sites chosen by our clients".

The new UK facility will be run by the company's Director of Process Development & Manufacturing, Mark Doran, who said:

"We provide the full spectrum of biomanufacturing services including upstream process development, downstream protein purification and cell banking, too. If clients then wish to proceed to full-scale cGMP production, we can do that too."

"The whole point is to create the best production process, shorten the product development cycle and increase productivity. Recently we were able to quadruple the yield of a particular product just by developing a better separation process, resulting in significant cost savings for our client".