Investment
DSM Venturing, the corporate venturing unit of Royal DSM NV, a nutrition and pharmaceutical materials supply specialist, has announced an investment in the Danish company Upfront Chromatography, a developer of customised industrial protein chromatography processes. DSM was joined in the round by InnovationsKapital and NBGI Ventures.
DSM’s Pharmaceutical Products division provides custom protein manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries. Leendert Staal, CEO 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 proprietary technology platform, Rhobust, focuses on two major application areas. The first is the recovery and purification of monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins and other biomolecules from blood plasma or bioreactors, under conditions compliant with current good manufacturing practice (cGMP). The second is 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.
In addition to the investment, DSM and Upfront have signed a collaboration agreement with the aim of further developing the Rhobust technology for the purification of monoclonal antibodies.
DSM Venturing invests in emerging companies in the fields of nutrition, pharmaceuticals and performance materials.
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