DCU CAMPUS COMPANY ARCHPORT TO CREATE UP TO 30 JOBS
- 25 September 2006

A majority stake in DCU bioprocessing start-up Archport Ltd., has been acquired by CU Chemie Uetikon, a division of the Swiss based CPH Chemie and Papier Holdings Group, with a major investment programme planned to create up to 30 high tech jobs.

CU Chemie Uetikon based in Lahr, Germany, provides production partnership for the pharmaceutical industry, providing the active ingredients for pharmaceutical preparations, custom synthesis, orphan drugs and the delivery of various key intermediates, and speciality chemicals. The company has a strong reputation for providing the highest standards of quality, reliability, and confidentiality, backed by the financial strength of its Swiss parent CPH Chemie and Papier Holdings.

Uetikon has taken an 80 per cent share of Archport, established at Dublin City University in 1998 to provide contract production and development services for the biopharmaceutical industry. DCU will retain a 20 per cent holding in the company. Uetikon sees Archport as a perfect fit for its business and will provide significant investment in new plant and staff for the expansion programme. The company already has purpose-built biopharmaceutical laboratories on the DCU campus.

Archport’s range of services include GMP compliant animal cell culture and purification of active biopharmaceutical ingredients for clinical trials or market ready drugs, such as recombinant proteins, cell therapy products and monoclonal antibodies. It also provides the scale-up of mammal or insect cell cultures, purification processes and joint R&D services.

Dr Heinz Sieger, CEO of Uetikon said: ” We are delighted to take this majority stake in Archport, an innovative DCU company which has grown out of the university’s National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology. It provides a wonderful opportunity to develop our drug production services into the biopharmaceutical field, and we are also delighted to be partnered with an innovative university like DCU with its world-class biotechnology research, in growing this business.”

DCU Professor Martin Clynes, founder of Archport, said: “This success vindicates the support given by DCU and Bioresearch Ireland in the 1980s to what was then a very new area of research; it also illustrates the important impact that government support for research Centres such as NICB can have on economic development.”

ENDS