The Darmstadt-headquartered pharmaceuticals, chemicals and life science group said the acquisition, which closed on Dec. 1, strengthens its upstream portfolio in therapeutic proteins by enabling scalable cell-based perfusion bioreactor processes from 2 ml to 2,000 L with rapid lab-scale process development.

Additionally, the deal billed as another milestone to accelerate innovation in Merck’s Process Solutions business unit through targeted smaller to medium-sized acquisitions offers future development opportunities in novel modality applications, including cell therapies, Merck said.

The Breez micro-bioreactor platform technology expands the upstream portfolio of the company’s BioContinuum Platform, which includes cell culture, cell retention, and bioreactor solutions for continuous bioprocessing.

As part of its intensified upstream ecosystem, Merck said the reactor will transform continuous process development through automation. It increases operator throughput by up to four times compared with other benchtop-scale systems to yield high-performing continuous processes that lower the cost of manufacturing and increase speed to market. Compared with competitive bioreactor platform technologies, it requires less bench space and no biosafety hood.

“Erbi’s Breez is one of the few micro-scale, fully automated, functionally closed and continuous perfusion cell culture platform technologies on the market. Its footprint is also much smaller than that of other bioreactor platform technologies,” Darren Verlenden, head of Process Solutions, noted.

“By integrating the Breez in our extensive Mobius portfolio, we can now offer a full range of bioreactors, cell retention systems and devices, and cell culture media,” Verlenden added. “This increases the productivity of Merck’s upstream processes and will further accelerate the adoption of perfusion cell culture operations as our customers move towards more connected and continuous processing.”

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist