AstraZeneca has acquired DSM Biologics’ manufacturing facility in Montreal, Canada. The 66,000-sq.-ft. facility will be used to manufacture antibody drug candidates for AZ’s clinical trials. The facility will be re-commissioned and AZ plans to begin full-scale production in 2009.

Leendert Staal, president and chief executive officer of DSM Pharmaceutical Products, commented, “We are very pleased with this transaction, hereby completing an important step in our Biologics strategy. We have a strong focus on technology development, and jointly with our partner Crucell have recently established Percivia, a new company in Cambridge, MA, for the sole purpose of developing the PER.C6 platform. We are developing our manufacturing facility in Groningen, Netherlands as a center of excellence for the scale-up and use of new PER.C6 technologies. The Montreal facility did not fit in this strategy.”

In December 2005, DSM stopped using the Montreal facility as part of its strategy for DSM Biologics, which is to develop and out-license a new manufacturing technology platform based on the PER.C6 human cell line, in a joint venture with Crucell N.V. The two companies recently achieved production yields of 10g/L in the fermentation of monoclonal antibodies using the PER.C6 technology.