Major European Biotech chooses SelecT™ To Increase Cell Culture Capacity by 60 Percent
20 Apr 2006The Automation Partnership (TAP), a world leading manufacturer of innovative industrial automation for life science applications, is pleased to announce Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), one of Europe’s most successful biotechs, has chosen SelecT™, the automated cell culture system, to help significantly improve its cell culture productivity.
SelecT, an established and proven automated cell culture system within major pharma will be used by CAT to automate cell culture of multiple cell lines in parallel. SelecT’s flexible processing capabilities will enable CAT to produce large quantities of cells daily for the screening of antibody based drug candidates.
Jon Green, VP Operations at CAT explained: “As CAT's throughput increases we need more resources for our cell culture. Before we reached a capacity crisis, we reviewed our options and decided automation was the sensible course.”
“We looked at both the SelecT and CompacT SelecT systems and chose the SelecT for its overall capacity. Since the system can potentially culture all the different cell lines we work with, we estimate using SelecT could increase our productivity by 60 percent without having to employ any additional scientific staff or build new cell culture facilities,” continued Green.
Tim Ward, Cell Culture Business Unit Director at TAP added: “It’s great that such a successful biotech has chosen to purchase SelecT to automate their cell culture. This is a significant investment for CAT, but it is a forward thinking approach to cell provision that will reap returns in terms of increased productivity. CAT’s choice of SelecT is an excellent endorsement of TAP’s technology and reinforces automated cell culture as strategically important in driving a major productivity step change.”