Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB) signed a cooperation agreement with Lonza covering cell culture media. 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 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.

According to an SSN official, Lonza’s cell culture media represent an ideal fit with the portfolio of products supplied by Sartorius Stedim Biotech.

“Just like our single-use bags and bioreactors, culture media are critical to the success of safe and efficient manufacture of drug materials,” said Reinhard Vogt, member of the SSB’s board of directors. “The demand for ready-to-use and innovative products is accordingly high. In the manufacture of biologicals, our customers will benefit from obtaining fully integrated single-use solutions for their entire cell culture process all from a single source.”

“For Lonza this agreement provides great upside potential as it will allow us to capture additional value from our media business in the form of additional revenue leading to higher capacity utilization,” added Lukas Utiger, COO of Lonza Bioscience.

According to a BCC market research report released last April, the global market for media, sera, and reagents used in biotechnology was valued at $2.3 billion in 2009, $2.5 billion in 2010, and is estimated to have reached nearly $2.8 billion at the end of 2011. The market is expected to reach $4.2 billion by 2016, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.8%.

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