Biotage receives record order

The customer is one of the worlds major pharmaceutical companies. The instruments, which originate from the recently acquired company Argonaut, will be used by chemists to enhance the processes used in the development of pharmaceuticals. Its encouraging that we have received an order of this magnitude so soon after the acquisition of Argonaut, says Jeff Bork, president and CEO of Biotage AB. The instruments will enable the scientists to simulate a number of processes under different conditions and to move from laboratory scale to production scale. The ordered instruments will be installed at the customers plants in the US and Europe during 2005. We are seeing an increased interest worldwide in the pharmaceutical industry towards tools that reduce bottlenecks for process development and full-scale production. As Medicinal Chemistry accelerates the hit-to-lead process through automation, the emphasis now moves toward getting NCEs into clinical trials, says David Patteson, president of Biotage, Discovery Chemistry Group. The instruments included in the order are Advantage Series® 2410 Personal Screening Synthesizers, Advantage Series® 3400 Multi-reactor Process Chemistry Workstations and Endeavor® Parallel Catalyst-screening Instruments.