Sartorius Stedim Biotech, a pharmaceutical and biotech supplier, today announced a substantial expansion of its product rray in the cell culture range. The company signed a cooperation agreement with the Swissbased life science group Lonza on long-term, global collaboration in the field of cell culture media.

Cell culture media are growth substances and nutrients for cells or microorganisms and are required in every biopharmaceutical manufacturing process.

The cooperation agreement provides that SSB will assume global sales and marketing of Lonza's media and buffers used in the manufacture of protein-based therapeutics and vaccines, while Lonza will continue to carry out development, manufacture and logistics operations for these products.

New product development will be mutually performed. The cell culture media, which are usually sold in liquid or powder form to biopharmaceutical customers, are to be successively converted to packaged forms as ready-to-use, prefilled SSB sterile single-use bags.

Furthermore, Lonza and SSB have agreed that these cell culture media will be sold under both brands in a co-branding arrangement.

In fiscal 2011, Lonza generated revenue of around €20 million with its cell culture media business. SSB will take over Lonza's commercial team of approximately 15 media specialists. Both parties have agreed not to disclose further contractual conditions.