Global supply company acquires Membio Inc.’s tech
The benchtop bioreactor company got a head start in Velocity science
May 1, 2024
Membio Inc.’s bioreactor tech has been acquired by ABEC. With locations in the US, Europe and Asia, the company is a global supplier of stainless steel and single-use integrated solutions and services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
Membio said with ABEC’s expertise and experience developing biomanufacturing solutions, the team is confident that the technology is in good hands.
Membio started working with Velocity on campus in 2018. The company’s tech was simply an idea to manufacture cells in a more efficient way by replicating the human body with technology. It was on campus in Velocity science, and with money won from Velocity’s pitch competitions, that the earliest prototypes were built to test this idea.
That startup, whose co-founders are Andrew Pundsack (BASc ‘19), Ashley Keefner (PhD ‘17, MBET ‘18) and Shane Kilpatrick (MASc ’17, MBET ‘18), who are pictured above left to right, joined Velocity Downtown Kitchener after winning the Velocity Pitch Competition in 2018.
“It would have been hard to get to where we did if not for Velocity’s support and resources,” Kilpatrick said. “The University of Waterloo has amazing opportunities to really combine depth of engineering in new and unique ways into the field of biotechnology.”
Speaking at a Velocity event in 2023 Kilpatrick noted that to lead a startup to success it’s crucial for founders to be ready to pivot.
“The experience of learning how to rapidly test ideas and prototype was invaluable, especially because we were doing things that had never been done before,” he said. “You need to be able to learn from failures and test things out. It was critical to have Velocity’s support.”
