July 1, 2011 (Vol. 31, No. 13)
At the recent “ESACT” conference in Vienna, Life Technologies and ProBioGen introduced Gibco® Freedom™ Cell Line Development Kits, a new line of royalty-free products that are designed to integrate cells, reagents, culture media, and protocols. Company officials say the goal is to bring simplicity and flexibility to the earliest stages of biological drug production.
“The new kits, CHO-S™ and DG44, can reduce the time from transfection to stable cell-line production from six to four months, making use of a single, optimized, animal-free culture medium throughout the entire development process,” noted Mark Stevenson, president and COO of Life Technologies.
The CHO-S kit resulted from a collaboration with ProBioGen while the DG44 kit was developed by Life Technologies. A Life Technologies spokesperson claimed the new kits will help companies grow more quickly because they will not have to put aside additional funds to pay royalties fees for the products. In addition to freedom from royalties, current commercial use licensing terms covering Freedom kits include, among other applications, the freedom to engage any contract manufacturer and the freedom to use a host cell line for multiple projects.
For more information, please go to www.invitrogen.com/freedom.
