Alliance expands to include taxane purification

Novasep and instrAction have expanded their worldwide strategic alliance to include the purification of taxanes, a well-known class of anti-cancer compounds.

Novasep supplies manufacturing solutions to the life science industries, while instrAction manufactures stationary phases for API purification processes. The two companies announced a strategic alliance covering non-chiral chromatography in July 2010, and this extended collaboration will now allow Novasep to develop and operate or supply optimized large-scale chromatography processes for purification of taxane-based active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates.

“Thanks to instrAction’s highly selective chromatographic stationary phases and Novasep’s 20 years’ experience in taxane synthesis and purification, we are looking to see a paradigm shift in solutions for our customers worldwide as a result of this collaboration,” says René De Vaumas, executive vice president in charge of Novasep Synthesis’ business development.

instrAction has synthesized a family of API-selective stationary phases among their 3000-phase library, which are reported to have shown a strong potential for the purification of various taxanes. Access to instrAction’s technology means Novasep expects to be able to develop a multi-step synthesis or semi-synthesis. The company can then scale up the optimized process and produce the API for clinical and commercial purposes. Alternatively, it can supply the developed process to its customers with performance guarantees, integrating its Prochrom HPLC columns and systems and instrAction’s selective stationary phases.

“We are delighted about our extended collaboration with Novasep,” said Dr Thomas Schwarz, CEO of instrAction. “The cooperation with Novasep in the field of taxane purification is a further important milestone to implement the instrAction technology in industrial downstream processes. We are very confident that it will be broadly applied to the industrial purification of APIs in the future.”

For more information on the companies visit www.novasep.com and www.instraction.com