Emerson and GE Healthcare Collaborate to Provide Integrated Protein Purification Systems for Biotech Industry
Emerson Process Management, a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR) and GE Healthcare today announced a global sales and marketing collaboration agreement to provide faster, simpler and more cost-efficient solutions for protein purification — the most critical operation in manufacturing of biotech medicines.
Protein purification is the final step of biotech medicine manufacturing, where chromatography and filtering act to purify the final medicine product. Biotech medicines improve the quality of life for individuals around the world who are confronted with health issues.
GE Healthcare and Emerson technologies that manage purification are installed as part of plants’ bioreactor control systems. The new alliance will allow for the integration of Emerson’s digital process automation system and GE Healthcare’s chromatography and filtration control system software to deliver control consistency across the biotech process, meeting the needs of both engineers and biochemists in pilot plants, laboratories, and large-scale manufacturing plants.
The control system software from GE Healthcare provides real-time control of the protein purification unit operation (chromatography, filtration or other liquid handling systems). It also offers fast and easy method development facilitation, method upscale/downscale, and powerful evaluation of purification results.
The digital process automation system from Emerson is a core technology of PlantWeb(R) digital plant architecture that uses networked digital intelligence for automation to deliver fast time-to-market and exceptional efficiency in large-scale biotechnology manufacturing. The digital plant architecture is proven in worldwide biotechnology plants, including those with the critical protein purification processes.
“This agreement with GE Healthcare is an important element of our aim to reduce the risk and complexities associated with scale, from the pilot plant to major production unit, and provide a consistent automation philosophy across the customer’s entire facility,” said John Berra, president of Emerson Process Management. “Benefits to our customers include streamlined validation, reduced start-up times, and simpler, more efficient day-to-day operation.”
“We are very pleased to be working with Emerson Process Management on this collaboration, which enables us to offer manufacturing customers streamlined protein purification processes in integration, implementation and qualification,” said Mats Grahn, vice president of product management from GE Healthcare.
About Emerson Process Management
Emerson Process Management (www.emersonprocess.com ), an Emerson business, is a leader in helping businesses automate their production, processing and distribution in the chemical, oil and gas, refining, pulp and paper, power, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and other industries. The company combines superior products and technology with industry-specific engineering, consulting, project management and maintenance services. Its brands include PlantWeb(R), Fisher(R), Micro Motion(R), Rosemount(R), Daniel(R), DeltaV(TM), Ovation(R) and AMS(TM) Suite.
About Emerson
St. Louis-based Emerson (www.gotoemerson.com ) is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers in process control; electronics and telecommunications; industrial automation; heating, ventilating and air conditioning; and appliance and tools. Sales in fiscal 2003 were $14 billion.
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that are shaping a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare’s expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and tailoring treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular diseases.
GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company that is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit www.gehealthcare.com .
