Gradipore's Texan work nears completion

Sydney bioseparations specialist Gradipore (ASX: GDP) has revealed that the first stage of its collaborative work with Texas A&M University is nearing completion.

The company, which is focused on membrane-based separations, said that the first chiral separation using Gradiflow-based technology had been successful.

CEO Robert Lieb said technological advances made in separating complex protein samples had even exceeded expectations.

"This is just the beginning of a long-term research relationship, but we believe the initial results provide a clear signal of the future commercial application of our collaboration with Texas A&M University," Lieb said.

The company, which also has US operations, researches, develops, manufactures and markets haematological and separation technologies. Its platform technology is Gradiflow, a membrane-based process for large-scale biological separations with applications in research, scientific and commercial environments including blood purification and biological drug manufacturing.

The technology enables the simultaneous purification of proteins and removal of viral and bacterial pathogens.

Lieb said that some of the initial results from the Texas A&M collaboration had been presented in June at the international Prep2002 conference in Washington DC. More detail would be given by the university's Prof Gyula Vigh in a keynote address at an international conference on separation technologies in Helsinki, Finland in September.

Vigh holds the inaugural chair in separation science at the university, a position supported by a $500,000 gift from Gradipore and a further $500,000 from Texas A&M.

Gradipore said the new chair was created to facilitate scientific and technological breakthroughs in the general area of membrane-based separations, with the aim of creating new opportunities in fields such as chiral and protein separations.