GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK), a unit of GE (Fairfield, CT, USA) has reached an agreement to acquire Xcellerex, Inc. (Marlborough, MA, USA), a supplier of manufacturing technologies for the biopharmaceutical industry. The acquisition of Xcellerex will allow GE Healthcare to expand its range of products and services for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals such as antibodies, recombinant proteins, and vaccines. The strong fit between the two companies, combined with expanded capabilities in product development and marketing, will offer significant customer benefits. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Xcellerex develops and produces turnkey biomanufacturing systems and production-scale bioreactors based around single-use components. The products offer significant advantages such as faster installation, lower capital investment, reduced risk of cross-contamination, and considerably increased flexibility compared with conventional manufacturing technologies.

Xcellerex’s production-scale single-use bioreactor systems are complementary to GE Healthcare's products and range of media for cell culture. Xcellerex’s FlexFactory is a custom-designed modular production platform based around single-use technologies that helps customers deploy manufacturing capacity more rapidly. Combining the expertise and capabilities of the two companies will enable GE Healthcare to offer a substantially wider range of added value, integrated products and services to the biopharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Nigel Darby, vice president of biotechnologies, and chief technology officer, GE Healthcare life sciences, said, “GE Healthcare has built a world-class set of tools, technologies and services for the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry, and by adding Xcellerex’s innovative products to our portfolio, we will be able to strongly enhance our customer offering. GE and Xcellerex share the vision that an integrated approach, where we can help customers optimize every stage of their manufacturing process, has the potential to increase production flexibility and to deliver higher yields of finished product while reducing time to market. With the global focus on spiraling health costs and the need for sustainable healthcare, these are critical issues for the industry.”

Guy Broadbent, president and CEO of Xcellerex, said, “We are very excited to become part of GE Healthcare’s life sciences business. The combination of Xcellerex’s people, technologies, and services with the resources and global reach of GE Healthcare will allow us to bring forward our plans to grow the business. The integration of Xcellerex’s products with GE Healthcare’s complementary capabilities in upstream and downstream bioprocessing will help bring great benefits to our customers. The entire Xcellerex team looks forward to joining GE.”

The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.

Xcellerex is commercializing turnkey biomanufacturing solutions that transform the speed and economics of producing therapeutic proteins, including biosimilars and vaccines. The company’s FlexFactory is a complete modular and portable production train based on single-use technologies, advanced process automation, and compact clean room architecture.

The company employs approximately 135 people and had revenues of approximately USD 50 million in 2011.

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