Ark Therapeutics and Merck Millipore agree collaboration

Ark Therapeutics has announced a new collaborative manufacturing agreement with life science company Merck Millipore.

The firm will work with EMD Millipore, the American division of Merck Millipore, to produce viral-based bioengineered vaccines and other live viral products at Ark's GMP manufacturing facility in Kuopio, Finland.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will look into manufacturing optimisation methods for pilot and production scale, before installing these processes at the Finnish site.

Meanwhile, a suite will be established at Kuopio to enable Ark to utilise Merck Millipore's process technology across its manufacturing services business operations.

Dr David Venables, Ark's chief executive officer, said the deal "combines Ark's unrivalled expertise in commercialisable GMP manufacturing processes for live viral products and EMD Millipore's pre-eminent position in bioprocessing integrated solutions and high-performance devices".

This comes after Ark announced a new manufacturing partnership with an unnamed European gene therapy company to create adenoviral-based medicines last month.