CEVEC Pharmaceuticals (CEVEC), the developer of a novel human expression system derived from amniocytes, and CCS Cell Culture Service GmbH (CCS), a contract research organization based in Hamburg, Germany, announced  the signing of a strategic license agreement.

The license will enable CCS to offer its customers transiently transfected CAP-TTM cells for cell based assay and protein production applications.

The transient CAP-TTM protein production technology is based on CAP cells, an immortalized cell line for stable protein production developed by CEVEC. These non-tumour origin cell lines exhibit high protein expression, have been adapted to serum-free suspension culture and show post-translational modifications that are human-like, including authentic human glycosylation patterns.

The collaboration combines CEVEC's proprietary CAP-TTM expression system with CCS' expertise to produce and process bulk quantities of transiently transfected cells for drug discovery research in pharmaceutical companies worldwide.

"CCS Cell Culture Services is a very experienced and trusted partner for the custom supply of cell based assay reagents. We're very pleased that they will add our CAP-T cells to their cell based assay technology portfolio and we're convinced that the cells will contribute significantly to the drug discovery process in the pharma industry " stated Wolfgang Kintzel, CEO at CEVEC.

Oliver Wehmeier, managing director of Cell Culture Services said: "We are excited about the potential of CEVEC's CAP-T technology. The cells meet all requirements for a host cell line in terms of robustness, transfection efficacy, expression level, and scalability. We obtained outstanding results from transient transfections of various secreted, intracellular, or membrane bound target proteins in CAP-T cells and we are pretty sure that this expression system will be of great benefit to our customers"

CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, operational since 2004 and located in Cologne, Germany, is a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in developing and producing therapeutic proteins, vaccines and monoclonal antibodies with human glycosylation patterns.

For more than thirteen years, CCS has been supporting research departments of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with custom made functionally validated cell based reagents. CCS is one of the leading suppliers of recombinant cell lines, assay-ready frozen cells, qualified membranes, and proteins for high-throughput screening.