14th June 2017

BBI Solutions increases capacity for cell culture native human transferrin production

BBI Solutions has invested into its facilities and resource in order to increase the capacity of cell culture transferrin production by up to 40%.

Stephane Argivier, BBI’s Director of Product Management said: “Demand for our cell culture grade transferrin was growing at such a rate that we had reached our full capacity. In response to market demand we saw the opportunity to increase our capacity to meet the needs of our customers and provide room for growth.”

Human transferrin is a natural and often essential component to promote cell growth in many cell culture applications and is frequently used in serum free media, where it acts as an iron transporter.

BBI have been manufacturing human holo, apo and sidero grades of transferrin for over 10 years. In this time, growth in the cell culture market has been noticeable and it is only set to continue, as forecasts show it to be worth 18.63 Billion USD by 2020 (CAGR 10.5%). Factors triggering growth include increasing incidence of chronic diseases, increasing regulatory approvals for cell culture based vaccines, funding for cell-based research and technological advancements in cell culture products.

The increase in BBI’s production capacity has seen substantial improvements to the manufacturing facilities at their site in Sittingbourne, England. Investing £150K into new machinery, and increasing resource capabilities.

BBI’s human transferrin is manufactured under the ISO 13485 quality management system. BBI provide high specification material at large scale and with excellent batch-to-batch consistency. The human transferrin is pasteurised and filtered at 0.2µm to guarantee low mycoplasma and low bioburden. BBI can also control many other parameters, such as moisture and iron levels, to meet customer’s specifications and requirements.