Pall Corporation today announced it will acquire the BioSepra Process Division from Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc. for a purchase price of approximately $32 million, net of cash and debt. The transaction is expected to close within 45 days.

The BioSepra Process Division develops, manufactures and markets chromatography sorbents that greatly simplify protein purification development and significantly improve biopharmaceutical manufacturing productivity.

Eric Krasnoff, Chairman and CEO of Pall Corporation, said,” Biosepra is a welcome addition to Pall’s Life Sciences business. Their innovative and broad range of chromatography chemistries fit in well with our significant market position in drug discovery and protein purification. We are very pleased to strengthen Pall’s ability to serve the needs of our Biotechnology customers.”

Pall and Ciphergen also announced an alliance to develop and promote Ciphergen’s patented SELDI ProteinChip technology as a bridge between the research lab and large scale drug production. This technology will be used to optimize chromatography resin selection for protein purification.

William E. Rich, President and CEO of Ciphergen. “We are excited about working with Pall and their customers to continue expansion of our pioneering work in Process Proteomics in order to speed process development using our ProteinChip Systems for protein purification and expression optimization and process monitoring.”

Pall plans to establish Process Proteomics Service Centers that will assist customers in selecting and optimizing sorbents and membranes for the purification of proteins used in the production of therapeutic proteins and other bioprocess applications. The addition of these sorbent technologies will enable Pall to provide a highly integrated solution for the bioprocess separations market.