Cytiva and the life sciences business of Pall are now one business under the Cytiva brand. With nearly 16,000 associates in 40 countries, and more than 300 years’ heritage of expertise, the new Cytiva supports customers in solving major biotechnology challenges and plays a critical role in advancing and accelerating therapeutics for the benefit of patients everywhere, according to Emmanuel Ligner, Danaher group executive, president and CEO of Cytiva.
In January, the life sciences business of Pall separated from Pall. Pall’s biotech portfolio is now a product family in Cytiva’s bioprocess business. The Pall medical portfolio will remain a market brand and part of Cytiva. Pall continues to operate as a Danaher operating company serving customers across a wide range of industrial applications, notes Ligner, while adding that the biotechnology industry is at the start of a new era with the emergence of new modalities.
“The industry is in constant movement and it needs a strong partner, capable of discovering and innovating the future tools for novel modalities,” he tells GEN. “But it also needs a partner capable of serving any manufacturing site around the world with the same level of service. Security of supply is important, and we saw that during the COVID pandemic. Thus, there is greater emphasis on local manufacturing. In addition to security of supply, the regional approach also provides sustainability and agility.
“A company must be capable of servicing its customers from A to Z—from an idea to final product. Being able to provide a complete solution and helping the customer research, develop, and accelerate their manufacturing plans is key. And for that, you need scale, talent, and an incredible footprint. That’s what Pall and Cytiva are going to provide to customers by getting together.”
According to Ligner, one particular area where the expertise of Pall and Cytiva will benefit customers is upstream bioprocessing.
“Pall brings its iCELLis bioreactor system to the table. It is an automated single use, fixed bed bioreactor for growing adherent cells in culture. It is well established in the market and fits in well with Cytiva’s single-use technology for fluid management,” he explains. “Pall also comes with a strong established product portfolio in filtration, especially virus removal, something outside of Cytiva’s technological offerings.
Innovation is critical
Innovation is critical, stresses Ligner.
“When I talk about innovation, I am referring to the need to innovate around platforms. How are we going to do this in a consistent manner? How are we going to be able to scale up or scale out depending on, for example, an autologous or allogeneic cell therapy?
Returning to the concept of new modalities, one of the fastest growing is mRNA manufacturing, again made evident during the COVID pandemic, says Ligner.
“Two years ago we acquired Precision Nanosystems, which is a leader in the encapsulation of mRNA, fluid management, and how you move mRNA inside a lipid nanoparticle” he tells GEN. “But new modalities not only include mRNA, but there are also viral vectors for cell therapy. There is so much more where we need to innovate.”
Role of digitalization
Ligner also discussed the importance of digitalization in data management, an area he believes the industry is only at the beginning.
“A main focus for us is to determine how can our own core data can be combined with the customer’s process data to make sure that we can create a predictive model. Generally speaking, biotech is behind other industries regarding digitalization,” he maintains. “We can do more around data sharing. It’s about transparency and potentially saving time and money. Understanding what happened during the beginning stages of a process can help improve output and increase.
“Relying on digital technologies can also make sure you know what works and what doesn’t earlier in the process so you can save time and money later on. This will impact your ability accelerate the product’s time to market, which reflects our mission, that is, to manufacture new molecules more inexpensively so that more people will have access to these life changing therapies.”
Cytiva’s now expanded and differentiated portfolio will better enable customers to accelerate therapeutics from discovery to delivery, continues Ligner. The portfolio now includes product brands such as Allegro, Supor, iCELLis, Kleenpak, and Pegasus, in addition to ÄKTA, Amersham, Biacore, FlexFactory, HyClone, MabSelect, Sefia, Whatman, Xcellerex, and Xuri.
