Berkeley Lights and TPG Biologics Enter into a Strategic Collaboration for Cell Line Development

Program Implements Beacon Platform for Creating Workflow Efficiencies to Accelerate the Drug Development Process

EMERYVILLE, Calif., May 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI), a leader in digital cell biology, announced today a program with Taipei-based TPG Biologics, Inc. (TPG), a leading cell line development company in Asia, focused on using the Beacon^® optofluidic platform to accelerate TPG's cell line development workflow. The program includes identifying the top producing clones, evaluating and predicting the stability of the clones over multiple generations, and validating monoclonality.

"TPG has already developed a streamlined cell line generation platform and generated dozens of production clones for our customers. We are always working to integrate innovative technologies to optimize our workflow. We chose to work with Berkeley Lights because the Beacon platform cell line development program has the potential to generate high yield cell lines more efficiently for us with additional insights into clone stability and enhanced clonality," said Pei-Jiun Chen, Ph.D., Chairman & President at TPG.

Clone stability is a critical requirement for cell line development. The Beacon platform is capable of screening thousands of clones in just five days. Different from traditional clone stability measurement that is based on measuring the productivity of a clone as a population, the Beacon platform is capable of evaluating a large number of subclones at a monocellular level in parallel. Automating the process on the Beacon platform increases efficiencies and reduces overall costs as well as provides additional insights into the behavior of clonal populations that are not currently available using traditional techniques.

"We are committed to delivering versatile platforms to our customers that can transform their workflows, generating time and cost savings," said Andy Last, Chief Commercial Officer at Berkeley Lights, Inc. "We look forward to working with TPG to support their goal of reaching a new level of scalability and precision that is unattainable with manual and semi-automated methods. TPG is located in Taipei and this strategic collaboration marks another significant step in BLI's expansion within Asia Pacific."

About TPG Biologics, Inc. (TPG)

TPG Biologics is a biotechnology company that specializes in the early stage research and development of biologics. As a Contract Research Organization (CRO), we provide reliable services for protein/antibody optimization, cell line development, process development, and analytics. From gene to RCB to process development and analytics, our workflow ensure that our clones have high productivities and good quality. In addition to TPG's CRO services, we offer a library of ready-to-ship cell clones expressing blockbuster antibody and protein biosimilars.