Cardinal Health has entered a feasibility agreement with Wyeth, through its Wyeth Pharmaceuticals division, to develop cell lines using its Gene Product Expression (GPEx®) cell line engineering technology.

Cardinal Health will use its GPEx technology to engineer cell lines that express two undisclosed biopharmaceutical molecules in experiments that will determine if the GPEx approach will work with Wyeth's current production methods. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Wyeth has taken a leadership position among major pharmaceutical companies to seriously move into large molecule therapeutics and has a great track record with biopharmaceutical R&D, manufacturing and commercialization,” said Paul Weiss, Ph.D., president of Cardinal Health's biopharmaceutical development services center. "We feel confident that the speed and high expression capabilities of our GPEx technology will be attractive to Wyeth as they evaluate additional platforms to rapidly and cost-effectively produce biopharmaceuticals.”