Strategic investor for Chromacon

JSR and Cromacon have entered into a partnership including a minority equity interest in ChromaCon AG by JSR Corporation. As a result of the partnership, the companies started worldwide commercial collaboration activities to promote ChromaCon’s MCSGP and CaptureSMB chromatographic process technologies which are implemented in the Contichrom equipment platform, in providing the biopharmaceutical industry with superior process solutions.

The MCSGP process principle, in contrast to classical batch chromatography, allows obtaining a substantial increase in both purity and yield of biopharmaceutical API. The MCSGP with its superior separation capability is particularly suitable for difficult next generation biologics purification challenges including bi-specific & multifunctional antibody drugs, antibody drug conjugates, fusion proteins as well as fragment antibodies. The CaptureSMB process principle allows achieving faster capture step processing, preserving protein integrity and increased economic use of Protein A resins, such as with JSR’s Amsphere Protein-A purification media, specifically designed for fast flow rates. In addition, the commercial collaboration also includes the development of novel chromatography media employing JSR’s polymer chemistry expertise, acting synergistically to further enhance MCSGP separation performance.
 
The Contichrom platform, being marketed by ChromaCon and its equipment partners, is a unique all-in-one process equipment platform, allowing the use of multiple process principles such as batch chromatography, sequential multi column chromatography, CaptureSMB, simulated-moving-bed (SMB) and MCSGP process principle confined to the same equipment.
 
The companies expect that the partnership will accelerate the market expansion of the Contichrom platform which could be an essential tool for enabling the purification of emerging new biologics including biosimilars and biobetters in biopharmaceutical production as well as allowing better and cost-effective processing of current biologics in development and production.
 
JSR aims to utilize this opportunity of the strategic partnership with ChromaCon not only as a leverage to increase the sales of Amsphere Protein-A purification media, but also as a foothold of developing its purification media business extended to the next generation biologics purification.
 
JSR Corporation is a multinational company employing over 5000 people worldwide and a leading materials supplier in a variety of technology driven markets.
 
ChromaCon AG is a private Life Science tool company located in Zürich, Switzerland. The company was founded in 2006 and awarded the CTI Start-up label in 2008.