ProChon Biotech taps Swiss firm to make cartilage growth factor

November 4, 2009 by MassDevice staff

ProChon Biotech Ltd. inked a deal to have Swiss firm Lonza manufacture a key element of its BioCart knee repair system.

Lonza will make Woburn, Mass.-based ProChon's proprietary fibroblast growth factor variant at its Hopkinton, Mass., plant. The BioCart system, which cultures a healthy sample of knee cartilage and implants it back into the damaged knee, uses the FGF2v product to stimulate cartilage growth on an implant scaffold.

ProChon CEO Patrick O’Donnell said the choice of Lonza's local operation demontrates his company's commitment to creating jobs in the Bay State. As further evidence, O'Donnell cited a separate deal with Averion International Corp. of Southborough to help run clinical trials of the BioCart system.

Basel, Switzerland-based Lonza has operations in Portsmouth, N.H., Rockland, Maine, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland and Minnesota, in addition to its Hopkinton facility.

The BioCart system is in clinical trials in preparation for regulatory approval applications in the U.S. and Europe.

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