DSM Invests in Chromatography Company

DSM Venturing announced that it has participated in an equity investment round in the Danish company Upfront Chromatography, a developer of customized industrial protein chromatography processes. The downstream processing platform developed by Upfront has the potential to contribute to DSM's biotechnology-derived products.

DSM Pharmaceutical Products is a global provider of custom manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries with a broad menu of services in protein production and in clinical, commercial and fill and finish areas. The company's achievements in biopharmaceutical production have resulted in a significant urgency to realize breakthroughs in downstream processing, enabling more efficient purification of monoclonal antibodies and other biopharmaceutical proteins.

Leendert Staal, CEO of DSM Pharmaceutical Products, comments: "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."

With its Rhobust platorm, Upfront focuses on two major application areas:

• Bioprocess, which offers solutions for the recovery and purification of biomolecules from blood plasma or bioreactors, and
• Biomine, which enables the isolation of high-value functional proteins and other biomolecules from bioreactors or industrial process side-streams for use as food ingredients, industrial enzymes, nutraceuticals and healthcare products