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Building on their relationship

Vela Laboratories and Anagnostics enter strategic partnership to offer hybcell technology to biotech and pharma customers under GMP conditions

| 3 min read

Jeffrey Bouley

VIENNA, Austria—A pair of Austrian companies, VelaLaboratories and Anagnostics Bioanalysis GmbH, are teaming up in a strategicpartnership aimed at technology that will assist in patient stratification andaffinity testing in drug discovery applications in the biotechnology andpharmaceutical realms.

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Jeffrey Bouley
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Published In

Volume 8 - Issue 3 | March 2012

March 2012

Vela Laboratories already considers itself among the leadingcompanies offering efficacy and release testing for biopharmaceuticals underGood Manufacturing Practice (GMP) conditions, and with this latest deal, Velaand Anagnostics have agreed upon a strategic partnership in the fields ofanalytical services and marketing and sales for drug discovery applications.

"The fast-growing demand in the field of biosimilars andcomparability testing results in a need for creative business models. Velaobtained an international reputation within the market for completecharacterization of biopharmaceuticals, biologics and biosimilars and is amongthe top tier suppliers of ICH Q6B conform protein analytics," according to Dr.Markus Fido, CEO of Vela Laboratories. "Anagnostics' hybcell technology offerstotally new analytical solutions, which we want to offer our customers.Together, we can serve our customers more efficiently and comprehensively."

"Synergies stemming from Anagnostics' innovative analyticalapproaches and the outstanding expertise of Vela Laboratories will enableAnagnostics to speed up the market penetration in the field of drug discovery,"adds Christoph Reschreiter, CEO of Anagnostics Bioanalysis.

The first step in the joint effort is to apply Anagnostics'compact sequencing for patient stratification during clinical studies, such asa test for mutations in the KRAS and BRAF genes.

The second step of the strategic partnership is to applyAnagnostics' affinity and immunogenicity measurement technology for thecharacterization of drug candidates as an alternative to such methods assurface plasmon resonance (SPR). In comparison to state-of-the-art methods likeSPR, the companies notes, hybcell offers "far more capacity for simultaneousexaminations of samples and is less vulnerable to interferences," thus offeringhigher selectivity. Another advantage, they say, is the ability of hybcelltests to be stored over long periods of time.

"Especially for long-term projects, this aspect could be anadvantage for researchers, as they can compare new drug candidates under thesame conditions that were applied for examinations earlier in the project," thecompanies noted in the news release about their partnership.

Vela Laboratories is an internationally active GMP-certifiedcontract research and analytics laboratory offering a broad portfolio ofanalytical methods, especially for characterization of proteins.

Anagnostics Bioanalysis focuses on development andproduction of systems and tests for analytics in drug development—such asaffinity and immunogenicity—and clinical diagnostics for such purposes as drugsof abuse, oncology and severe infections. The combination of DNA and proteintests on the same device (hyborg) enables innovative and efficient diagnosticsolutions for the rapidly growing demand driven by personalized medicine, thecompany maintains. Since 2005, the company has developed multiplexed analyticalsystems (hyborg) and tests (hybcells). The patented hybcell is reportedly theworld's first cylindrical microarray and forms the core of Anagnostics'technology. Based on this hybcell, complete test kits are assembled and fullyautomated processed by hyborg, the company says.

Vela and Anagnostics are not strangers to one another.August 2011 saw Anagnostics release news that it had tapped Vela Laboratoriesto be its first service partner, so that Vela could offer its pharmaceuticaland biotech clients the ability to use Anagnostics' hybcell microarray platform.Also, in January 2011, Vela announced that was working with Anagnostics todevelop a method for detecting KRAS2 and BRAF mutations using the hybcellplatform.

News of the formation of 2012's strategic partnershipfollowed a matter of days after Anagnostics announced it had entered into anexclusive sales partnership for Nordic countries with Denmark-based companyRamcon A/S, under which Ramcon will begin selling available drug screeningtests (hybcell DoA Urine and hybcell DoA Saliva) and pharmacogenetics tests(hybcell Oncogenes Tissue) in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.

Building on their relationship

About the Author

Jeffrey Bouley

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March 2012

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