Filip Van der Gucht
CEO, XEDEV
A Belgian engineering company that builds R&D machines grew over 30 years into a niche pharma player on a global scale.
Van der Gucht: “We started PROCEPT in 1994 as a developer of R&D process machines that could give researchers more data and minimize the need for expensive research materials. From the beginning, we focused on equipment to engineer particles of active substances to be spray dried, agglomerated or coated. Meanwhile, around 700 machines from PROCEPT are used worldwide, mainly for the development of new drugs in solid form such as tablets, capsules, powder,…”
Our engineers and researchers are communicating vessels that reinforce each other.
Spray drying as a catalyst for growth
“About 20 years ago, Janssen Pharmaceutica introduced a unique technique for making drugs by spray drying. PROCEPT responded immediately to this innovation at the time by developing an R&D spray dryer, for which we also received a VLAIO grant. The interest in the pharma sector was so big that we quickly became the global specialist in this niche.”
“About 15 years ago we received more requests by clients for outsourcing particle engineering experiments with their molecules to us. In 2012 we started XEDEV, a service company that quickly grew into a global player with specific expertise in particle engineering and stabilizing biological molecules via spray drying,” says Van der Gucht.
Engineers and researchers strengthen each other in offering unique solutions
“Today we offer our customers the option of buying our research technologies and/or outsourcing their R&D. Our engineers and researchers are communicating vessels that reinforce each other. For example, our engineers are quickly available to modify PROCEPT devices or solve problems for our researchers. Conversely, researchers are the first customers for our engineers to test new devices. This synergy makes us unique and gives us a strong market position.”
Van der Gucht: ” Since a few years, XEDEV has a pharmaceutical license, allowing us now to develop and produce drugs for clinical trials phase 1 and 2 in our new state-of-the-art infrastructure with PROCEPT technologies.”
