Taiwan Licenses Protein-Production Technology

Taiwan's Development Center for Biotechnology has signed a nonexclusive research licensing deal with DSM Biologics, a unit of DSM Pharmaceutical Products, and Crucell, the companies announced.

The agreement involves Crucell and DSM's PER.C6 technology platform. Taiwan will use the PER.C6 human cell line for the in-house production of undisclosed recombinant proteins. Crucell said this license is its second Taiwanese license agreement involving recombinant protein production in a year, confirming the company's strong focus on Taiwan and Asia in general.

The PER.C6 technology platform has been developed for the large-scale manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, including vaccines. Compared with conventional production technologies, the strengths of the PER.C6 technology lie in its good safety profile, scalability and productivity under serum-free culture conditions, according to Crucell and DSM. Crucell is using PER.C6 in its development programs for vaccines against Ebola, malaria, West Nile virus and influenza.