Biovation Ltd. Now Represented by its Own Office in the U.S.
DARMSTADT, Germany, and ABERDEEN, Scotland, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck KGaA announced today that its affiliate Biovation Ltd. of Aberdeen, UK, has expanded its operations by opening of a U.S. office in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Biovation's contact person at the new office will be Hank Nowak, Manager of Business Development. ``Hank will be responsible for all business development activities in North America,'' said Fiona Adair, Director of Business Development. ``The opening of our new US office reflects our increasing activity and commitment to our partners in North America.''
Biovation is a UK based antibody and protein company with a proprietary technology, De-Immunisation, designed to genetically engineer antibodies and other proteins for administration to humans without immunogenicity. All biologics, even fully-human antibodies and human derived proteins, can potentially cause an adverse immune response when administered to patients.
De-Immunisation provides a means for re-engineering these molecules to eliminate this risk and generate biologics suitable for multiple dose, chronic administration. Biovation has successfully applied De-Immunisation to a variety of antibody and protein products, principally through partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies worldwide.
Background on Biovation Ltd.
Biovation Ltd. (Internet: www.biovation.co.uk ) is a UK-based antibody and protein engineering company which uses its proprietary De-Immunisation technology to take its partners' therapeutics through the barriers of immunogenic side effects. All antibodies, even humanised and fully human, can potentially cause an adverse immune response when administered to patients. De-Immunisation reduces that risk by identifying and eliminating potentially immunogenic sequences of the therapeutic molecule, while retaining efficacy. Since 1998, Biovation has established collaborations with 16 companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australasia. The five collaborations formed since Biovation was acquired by Merck KGaA in October 2000 are with: Procyon Biopharma (Canada), Viragen Inc. (USA), Epicyte Pharmaceuticals Inc. (USA), Corixa Corp.(USA) and an other undisclosed US firm. In a collaboration with Cornell University, Biovation has created a DeImmunised antibody for the treatment of prostate cancer, which has proven non-immunogenic in Phase I clinical trials. Biovation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck KGaA and operates as an independent company within the Merck group... |
