Bayer licenses Sartorius' UVivatec

Germany's Bayer Technology Services GmbH has signed an exclusive cooperation agreement on the manufacture and worldwide marketing of products made using UVivatec, a method for inactivating virsuses in biopharmaceuticals via UVC irradiation, developed by Sartorius Stedim Biotech GmbH.

Typical areas of use are virus inactivation of cell-culture media, antibody solutions and solutions containing recombinant proteins, as well as irradiation of vaccines and therapeutics produced from blood and plasma. Further areas of application, such as removal of mycoplasma from bioreactor media, are currently being assessed. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to Bayer, compared with conventional methods, UVivatec technology is ideal for highly-efficient inactivation of small non-enveloped viruses. So far, no other virus inactivation method has been able to attain this level of clearance efficiency. UVivatec is therefore especially suitable as an alternative or supplementary method for upstream and downstream processing, the firm noted.