DSM Venturing, the corporate unit of Royal DSM N.V., has made an equity investment in Upfront Chromatography, a developer of customized industrial protein chromatography processes. According to DSM, Upfront's downstream processing platform has the potential to contribute to all biotechnology-derived products from DSM.

DSM Pharmaceutical Products provides custom manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries with services in protein production and in clinical, commercial and fill and finish areas. According to the company, its involvement in biopharmaceutical production has created a need for breakthroughs in downstream processing for more efficient purification of monoclonal antibodies and other biopharmaceutical proteins. Leendert Staal, chief executive officer of DSM Pharmaceutical Products, said, "Upfront is at the forefront of technological breakthroughs in downstream processing. Through our investment we want to support further developments in the company which will benefit both DSM and Upfront."

Upfront's Rhobust technology platform focuses on two major application areas, bioprocess and biomine. The bioprocess offers recovery and purification of monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins and other biomolecules from blood plasma or bioreactors, under cGMP-compliant conditions. Biomine Rhobust enables the isolation of functional proteins and other biomolecules from bioreactors or industrial process side-streams for use as food ingredients, industrial enzymes, nutraceuticals and healthcare products.

DSM and Upfront have also signed a collaboration agreement for further developing the Rhobust technology for the purification of monoclonal antibodies.

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