Japan’s Tosoh has strengthened and expanded its bioscience business following the acquisition of a 33.3% stake in Semba Biosciences. Financial details were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, Semba Biosciences makes and sells continuous simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatrography equipment and bio-related agents.

The Tokyo-headquartered group said the investment will strengthen its collaboration with Semba not only in building synergies with its Toyopearl liquid chromatography separation and purification media business, but also in expanding further in related fields. Tosoh said it aims to become a total solutions provider for biopharmaceutical purification.

Semba, which launched the world’s first bench-top continuous SMB chromatrography system in 2009, is aiming to launch its ProGMP continuous chromatography platform for GMP- compliant, single-use manufacturing.

According to Tosoh, biopharmaceuticals are seeing significant market growth, but their development and manufacturing still mostly rely on batch processing in the purification process. The Japanese firm said continuous chromatography is attracting attention as it can overcome the traditional limitations of conventional batch processing, achieving high productivity at low cost.