Uppsala, Sweden – 15 February 2023 – Biotage AB (publ) (“Biotage”) has entered into an agreement to acquire Astrea Bioseparations (“Astrea”), a high-growth chromatography solutions provider from Gamma Biosciences (“Gamma”), a life sciences tools platform created by KKR. The acquisition also includes the shares held by certain minority investors in the Astrea group (together, the “Sellers”, and together with the acquisition of Astrea, the “Transaction”). The Transaction is conditional upon shareholder approval at a general meeting of Biotage and subject to customary closing conditions.

Tomas Blomquist, President and CEO: Even though the end of the year was less satisfactory than we would have wanted, I can still say that 2022 was the best year in our 25-year history. Biotage grew rapidly, with profitability and strong cash flow. During the year, we recorded several records: net sales of more than SEK 400 million in a quarter and an operating profit of more than SEK 300 million for the year. For the full year, our net sales amounted to SEK 1,566 million.

Doubling the company’s footprint in Silicon Valley, a hot spot for the promising Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics area, is a testament to Biotage’s commitment and priority to continuously invest and strengthen its presence as a supplier to the Pharma and BioPharma drug discovery and development industry.

Funded by academia, Vinnova and industry, a five-year multi-disciplinary collaboration has been launched to improve efficiency in production methods for adeno-associated virus (AAV) based gene therapies. Biotage is contributing with technology and expertise in plasmid DNA and AAV purification, as well as by funding a dedicated PhD student within the project. “We are thrilled to join the GeneNova project to develop transformative improvements of the drug development and production processes for gene therapies.” says Tomas Blomquist, President and CEO of Biotage.

Biotage has launched the new Biotage® Selekt Enkel Flash Purification System, a new member of the Selekt family of instruments. Maintaining the small footprint, powerful interface, quality and robustness of the Biotage® Selekt system, the Biotage® Selekt Enkel offers a modular design that allows the system to be modified to meet the demands of your synthesis workflow. The instrument also delivers the greener operation and lower solvent consumption engineered into the Selekt family, making Biotage® Selekt and new Biotage® Selekt Enkel, along with Biotage® Sfär columns, the solutions of choice for those wishing to obtain pure products with minimized environmental impact.

Biotage has launched the Biotage® Extrahera™ HV-5000, an automated workstation dedicated to column-based sample preparation that is able to aspirate and dispense high volume samples. The system maintains the Extrahera™ family’s small footprint, intuitive software, and precision engineering for the uniform processing of samples. With its 4-channel pipette head, the new workstation is able to aspirate and dispense volumes of 250 – 5000 μL per channel, and offers GLP capability and support for SPE and SLE column formats.

Biotage have published their annual report for 2021 giving end of year results for the entire organisation.

Biotage is pleased to share its ethos, which captures the essence of the company – HumanKind Unlimited. This reflects Biotage’s commitment to serve the future needs of society, with a focus on the ability of science to unleash the full potential of humanity.

Plasmids are the common starting material for viral vectors, recombinant proteins, mRNA and DNA vaccines. With the rapid growth of interest in cell therapy, gene therapy and advanced therapeutics, the demand for pure DNA plasmids is exponential increasing. However, technological development in this field has lagged behind, and the highly manual plasmid preparation process has remained the same for the last 40 years.

The recent global pandemic has illustrated that the development of smarter healthcare is a global need, as acknowledged by the U.N.’s sustainable development program. Biotage has recognized this trend by working to establish itself across multiple geographies, acknowledging that a commitment to HumanKind Unlimited is not restricted by location.