Merck Millipore, the life science business of Germany’s Merck, plans to collaborate with compatriot Celares, a drug delivery company providing customized solutions, to offer pegylation services to customers developing protein-based therapeutics and biosimilars. This would include feasibility studies, process and analytical development and scale-up from milligram to gram quantities required for pilot and subsequent commercial scale.

Pegylation, the attachment of polyethylene glycol to a molecule, is claimed to significantly improve the pharmacological and physicochemical properties of peptide and protein therapeutics and reduce side effects, thus enhancing protein stability, bioavailability, and solubility and overcoming common challenges in the development of these therapeutics.

Although it is a widely used approach to improving drug delivery, a successful pegylation strategy is dependent upon materials expertise and application experience, said Andrew Bulpin, executive vice president of process solutions at Merck Millipore. Through the collaboration with Celares, a recognized leader, he said his company will now be able to expand its services to include conjugation, in this way helping its biopharmaceutical and biosimiliar customers to optimize their protein therapeutics and reduce their time to market.

The new services will leverage Merck Millipore’s range of functionalized PEG products of different molecular weight and activation chemistry, as well as buffers, solvents, and excipients, unit operations employed during the pegylation process and subsequent purification including tangential and normal flow filtration and chromatography.