Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational company Asahi Kasei, and GeminiBio, entered into a strategic partnership to advance the application of inline buffer formulation (IBF) in the biopharmaceutical industry.

The companies will combine two high-efficiency solutions for buffer management for biopharmaceutical manufacturers in one package. Asahi Kasei Bioprocess will leverage its expertise in IBF and its MOTIV system, and GeminiBio will use its bioprocess liquid manufacturing capabilities. The aim is to result in fewer bottlenecks in manufacturing, streamlining the IBF process. The companies entered the agreement in March 2023 with the initial scope of the North American biopharmaceutical industry.

Buffers are used extensively in the development and manufacturing process for all biopharmaceuticals. The manufacturing of buffers is time consuming and resource intensive, and often a significant bottleneck in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process. The Asahi Kasei Bioprocess MOTIV IBF system is built specifically to debottleneck downstream processing to move product more efficiently through the manufacturing process.

However, creating the buffer concentrates that are used with these systems has remained a challenge. Pairing MOTIV with GeminiBio’s pre-mixed concentrates aim to provide biopharmaceutical manufacturers with a solution, resulting in a new level of efficiency and cost savings throughout the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process.

“Our partnership with GeminiBio solidifies both companies’ commitment to improving the efficiency and efficacy of buffer formulation,” said Chris Rombach, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America. “The combination of Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America’s long-standing buffer formulation expertise and GeminiBio’s state-of-the-art buffer concentrate manufacturing capabilities will aid bioprocessors to reduce costs, minimize facility footprint and assure on time, every time buffer production.”

While the collaboration aims to provide biopharmaceutical manufacturers with immediate benefit, the value is expected to increase exponentially over time with the open sharing of data and joint testing that will spur innovation at both companies. The MOTIV system will be better acclimated to immediately support a wider variety of pre-mixed buffer concentrates as the variety of the concentrates diversifies.

“We are excited to collaborate with Asahi Kasei Bioprocess to help the biotech industry further address the buffer bottleneck”, said Brian Parker, CEO of GeminiBio. “GeminiBio is committed to helping our customers simplify upstream and downstream process liquid manufacturing and supporting inline dilution with ready to use buffer concentrates for the MOTIV IBF system allows us to provide an even higher level of simplification for our customers.”