BioPharma APAC in an interaction with  Tomas Blomquist, CEO and President of Biotage, to gain insights into the recent acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations and its significance for the company's long-term strategic goals. Blomquist highlighted that Biotage's aim is to strengthen its solutions offering for the development and manufacturing of biologics and advanced therapeutics, and the acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations is a significant step in that direction.

What motivated Biotage to acquire Astrea Bioseparations and how does it align with their long-term strategic goals?

Biotage already has a complete workflow solution for the development and scale-up of small molecules, and a strong position in the small molecule chromatography market globally.

Biotage’s strategic goal is to strengthen its solutions offering for the development and manufacturing of biologics and advanced therapeutics, and the acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations is a major step in realizing this vision. The combination of Biotage and Astrea will create a leading chromatography platform company serving both, the pharma and biopharma sectors.

The acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations is the natural next step to Biotage, following the acquisition of ATDBio in 2021, bringing oligonucleotide synthesis and purification expertise to the offering, and the acquisition of PhyNexus in 2018 for plasmid DNA (pDNA) and biomolecule purification capabilities.    

How will the addition of Astrea Bioseparations' chromatography solutions enhance Biotage's existing portfolio?

With Astrea Bioseparations, Biotage will be able to support both pharma and biopharma customers all the way from lab-scale development to full-scale manufacturing. The product portfolios are highly complementary, expanding Biotage’s capabilities to provide high-quality products, services and expertise to drug developers and manufacturers globally.

Can you provide more details about Astrea Bioseparations' product offerings and their potential impact on the biopharma industry?

Astrea Bioseparations provides bioprocessing tools for large molecules and advanced therapeutics with a strong expertise and product portfolio consisting high purity resins, adsorbents, chromatography columns and nanofiber-based purification technology. Astrea Bioseparations enables their customers to bring next-generation therapies to the market to treat and cure diseases.

With the acquisition, what specific advancements or breakthroughs in the chromatography sector does Biotage hope to achieve?

The goal is to expand our offering and expertise from small molecules to customers operating in the biologics and advanced therapeutics segment. Our teams and portfolios are highly complementary, and our focus is on building a leading chromatography platform company, from the customer offering in lab-scale development up to the commercial bioprocessing scale.

How does Biotage plan to leverage the expertise of Astrea Bioseparations' team and integrate them into their existing operations?

We will create together with Astrea Bioseparations a shared global leading chromatography vision for the future. This process will take some time to complete.

What are the key benefits for Biotage in terms of geographical presence and production sites as a result of this acquisition?

Astrea Bioseparations has strong, high-quality production sites and research & development operations, complementary to Biotage’s global sites and expertise. We will be able to leverage this as we will be able to reach out to new markets more efficiently.

Could you elaborate on the significance of nanofiber-based purification technologies and how they complement Biotage's existing purification solutions?

Astrea Bioseparations’ nanofiber technology enables efficient purification of viral vectors, such as lentiviruses utilized in cell and gene therapy, reducing bottlenecks for viral vector sample preparation and purification. This complement Biotage’s existing purification solutions towards small molecules and pDNA.

How does Biotage intend to address the evolving needs of the biopharma industry, particularly in the area of biologics and advanced therapeutics?

Biotage’s strategy is focused on strengthening our expertise and offering towards biologics and advances therapeutics. Astrea Bioseparations has a strong portfolio with innovative solutions targeting predominantly this sector in the commercial large-scale bioprocessing segment.

The acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations is the natural next step to Biotage, following the acquisition of ATDBio in 2021, bringing oligonucleotide synthesis and purification expertise to the offering, and the acquisition of PhyNexus in 2018 for pDNA and biomolecule purification.    

What are the near-term product launches in Astrea Bioseparations' pipeline and how do they contribute to Biotage's overall growth strategy?

Astrea Bioseparations and Biotage keep innovating new products and solutions for the pharma and biopharma developers and manufacturers with their key outcomes in mind, such as high-purity and efficiency. The new requirements towards chromatography solutions coming from the emerging molecules sector has a central role in our research and development operations.

Could you share more information about the new members, Kieran Murphy and Kugan Sathiyanandarajah, and their respective backgrounds? How do their appointments strengthen Biotage's board of directors?

Kieran Murphy and Kugan Sathiyanandarajah bring deep expertise and knowledge from global life sciences companies, and this will be extremely valuable for Biotage.

Kieran Murphy is chairman of the board of Gamma Biosciences and board member of SPT Labtech. He is a former president and CEO of GE Healthcare and before that president and CEO of GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Prior to GE, he was the CEO of Whatman plc.

Kugan Sathiyanandarajah is Head of KKR’s Health Care Strategic Growth business in Europe and is a board member in several different companies