Pharmacia Biosystems

Pharmacia Biosystems was a major division of the Swedish pharmaceutical company Pharmacia AB, focusing on biotechnology tools, diagnostics, and drug delivery systems. It is most renowned for its Pharmacia Biotech unit, which pioneered protein purification technologies such as Sephadex chromatography and the ÄKTA system. The division also incubated Pharmacia Biosensor, which developed the first commercial surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instruments before spinning off as Biacore. In 1997, Pharmacia Biotech merged with Amersham Life Sciences to form Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, eventually becoming part of GE Healthcare and later Danaher's Cytiva. Today, the legacy of Pharmacia Biosystems remains central to the global biopharmaceutical manufacturing infrastructure. Its technologies are used in the production of the majority of FDA-approved monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins.