Across our three business units Science & Lab Solutions, Process Solutions and Life Science Services, our R&D teams continue to bring expertise and a diversified and relevant portfolio of products and services to our customers around the world.
The development of preventive and personalized medicine is progressing steadily. It is therefore essential to set standards with robust, scalable and efficient processes for viral vector production, next-generation sequencing, i.e. improved technologies for DNA sequencing, and autologous cell therapies. This in turn will support the expansion of disruptive cell and gene therapies to treat the most challenging and chronic conditions, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy.
Together, we are having a decisive impact on these scientific developments. To this end, more than 1,700 engineers, chemists and biologists across our twelve global hubs continue to focus on six strategic innovation vectors: building our core portfolio, labs and factories of the future, novel modalities, next-generation biology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital, and sustainability. In 2024, we launched more than 9,200 products and solutions, including those under our “faucet program” for antibodies, reference materials, chemicals, and nanomaterials.
Science & Lab Solutions
In 2024, we launched our M-Trace® software and the associated mobile app for microbiological quality control, a comprehensive data tracking solution to digitalize sterility testing. The software helps ensure overall process safety by automatically documenting data for every step of the testing process. This reduces the risk of deviations, false positive results, and human error.
For more than 50 years, our lab water systems have been an integral part of academic laboratories. In 2024, we continued to evolve our Milli-Q® lab water systems with the launch of Milli-Q® SQ 2Series systems. Installation of these compact systems into laboratory setups can be self-managed by customers and take 30 minutes. It is also what we call a “Greener Alternative Product”, reducing water usage by up to 60% and minimizing power consumption compared with our previous series, thus providing a greener solution for ultrapure water. We also launched enhanced Milli-Q® water purification cartridges with sustainability in mind. For instance, the carbon emissions of these can now be reduced by up to 18% over the water purification system’s lifetime.
Process Solutions
In September, we launched the first scalable single-use mixer specifically designed for manufacturing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). ADCs are a rapidly emerging class of therapeutic agents that can target and selectively kill tumor cells while protecting healthy ones. The Mobius® ADC Reactor enables biopharmaceutical companies to produce crucial therapies faster and more safely by offering accelerated turnaround times and fewer cross-contamination risks, all while maintaining high product quality. The new ADC bioreactor is a collaboration between the Process Solutions and Life Science Services business units.
In addition, Process Solutions launched several other products to support the needs of our customers, including: GMP-grade Benzonase® salt tolerant endonuclease, which enables the incorporation of high salt concentrations during the midstream step in bioprocessing; mPredict™ Co-Crystal Prediction Service, a new AI-based tool designed to accelerate drug formulation that achieves results three times faster than random digital screening; RevIT GMP AAV Enhancer, which can be paired with any transfection reagent and delivers higher titers for recombinant adeno-associated virus production; and Cellvento® ModiFeed Gal+, Gal-, and Sial+ COMP feeds, three new chemically defined feeds, enabling customers to easily fine-tune galactosylation or sialylation (crucial product quality attributes) of mAbs, biosimilars or other therapeutic proteins.
Life Science Services
In April, Life Science Services launched a first-of-its-kind, all-in-one, validated genetic stability assay. The Aptegra™ genetic stability platform replaces five different assays and four different technologies with one assay that uses a digital platform with next-generation sequencing technology. This approach reduces testing time by 66% compared with traditional methods. The platform meets all regulatory requirements for genetic stability assurance, including copy number assessment.