Cohesive Biotechnologies Inc., of Acton, Mass., has set June as thegoal for shipping its first products designed to separate and purifybiomolecules in a way that allows biotech and pharmaceuticalcompanies to speed production.The company uses a chemistry developed at Polaroid Corporation as abasis for carrying out chromatographic separations. The company hasdeveloped mechanisms to immobilize these chemistries onto asubstrate. When a mixture of proteins is pumped through, the activeingredient selectively adheres to the substrate in the form of a flour-likepowder, and then can be purified.Hubert Quinn, president and chief executive officer, said Cohesive'stechnology allows the company to produce sufficiently large quantitiesof these ingredients to cut significantly the time and cost of separationand purification for pharmaceutical manufacturers.Quinn said the products to be shipped in June are designed to separatethree different classes of biological molecules. The products include ananion exchanger that can separate positively charged proteins, a cationexchanger for negatively charged proteins, and a reverse phaseexchanger that separates proteins based on their hydrophobicity.Cohesive plans to bring out an additional 10 to 15 products before theend of the year, Quinn said.

-- Philippa Maister

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