GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), today
announced it has acquired Wave Biotech LLC, a supplier of innovative
disposable manufacturing technologies for the biopharmaceutical
industry. The acquisition of Wave Biotech LLC including its subsidiary
Wave Europe Pvt. Ltd. will allow GE Healthcare to expand its offering
of products and services for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals
such as antibodies and vaccines. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Wave Biotech develops and manufactures unique bioreactors which
are designed to replace traditional and more expensive stainless steel
tanks and piping. The patented products offer considerable advantages
such as more rapid installation, potentially reducing time to market,
and significantly lower costs by eliminating the need for cleaning and
validating between batches. The equipment is already in use in over
three hundred companies worldwide. Wave Biotech single use bioreactors
are also increasingly being used to enable the manufacture of
patient-specific cell and gene therapy products.
Ann O'Hara, General Manager of GE Healthcare's BioProcess
business, said "Wave Biotech is an excellent company with a strong
track record of innovation and a product range that is highly
complementary with our existing BioProcess business. The combination
of GE Healthcare and Wave Biotech will allow us to expand into new
applications and to create a broad offering of added value tools and
services for biopharmaceutical manufacture."
"We are very excited to be part of GE Healthcare, who already
offer a broad range of technologies and services to the
biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry" said Dr. Vijay Singh,
President and founder of Wave Biotech. "Our customers will benefit
greatly from the global presence and the R&D resources that GE
Healthcare brings to the table. The integration of single-use cell
culture with GE Healthcare's existing filtration and downstream
operations will provide a host of new disposable solutions to this
growing industry."
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and
services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in
medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics,
patient monitoring systems performance improvement, drug discovery,
and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians
around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform,
treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the
fullest.
GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable
healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart
disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our
vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care
focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and
disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare
is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE).
Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to
serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100
countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website
at www.gehealthcare.com.
About Wave Biotech LLC
Wave Biotech is a research-based company that develops and
manufactures innovative process equipment for the pharmaceutical and
biotechnology industry. Our focus is on developing disposable
bioprocess equipment for operations traditionally requiring
stainless-steel tanks and piping. Key products, such as the Wave
Bioreactor, Wave Mixer, and Sterile Tube Fuser, feature disposable
contact materials that eliminate cleaning and validation, thereby
reducing costs in operations ranging from cell culture, media
preparation, buffer dissolution, thawing process intermediates to
patient-specific cell therapy in hospitals. These unique, patented,
devices can be installed and commissioned rapidly, drastically
reducing the time-to-market for biological products. This equipment is
in use with hundreds of companies worldwide, both for R&D and
commercial applications. Wave Biotech employs approximately 70 people
worldwide and operates R&D and manufacturing facilities in Somerset,
New Jersey. Wave Biotech's annual revenues are approximately $25
million. Dr. Vijay Singh, President and founder of Wave Biotech, will
continue to operate the business from the Somerset facility. More
information is available at www.wavebiotech.com.
