B3C newswire / -[/b] ARTES Biotechnology, InstrAction and Q-Biologicals establish a three-party consortium for vaccine developments for veterinary applications.
Under the title:" development of a virus-like-particle (VLP) based vaccine platform and stable formulation especially suited for the veterinary applications", in short "Plurivax", the EU cooperation is part of the recent 8th EuroTransBio call and will be funded for a three year period supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Flanders (Belgium) agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT)
Nowadays virus-like particles (VLPs) have become a widely used vehicle for the development of vaccines used in humans. Without being infectious, the particles are used to transport foreign antigens in an ideal way to the immune system. For veterinary applications, the applied VLP production process needs to be simplified and optimized. The platform technology and the common production process requires adaption in reference to cost-effectiveness and promptness. Especially the factor "manufacturing cost" is the major driver for a successful market introduction and will influence the acceptance for later necessary mass vaccinations in the veterinary field.
The intent of "Plurivax" is to develop a stable production platform and an adapted high-quality process to have an effective and usable integrated best practice suitable for several veterinary vaccines.
The platform resulting from this project will be the first of its kind in veterinary application and thus opens access to a huge market. A robust, inexpensive vaccine will reduce the need for antibiotic treatment of food animals, thereby directly reducing production costs and improving quality of life for the food animal itself and for the consumer.
"ARTES VLP platform METAVAX® has already been applied to the development of adjuvant-free vaccines against different diseases like avian and swine flu, malaria and HIV. Our yeast expression host Hansenula is the preferred technology for affordable mass vaccination and is recommended by the WHO for mass vaccinations. Together, our platforms build an excellent approach to low-cost mass production of safe and effective vaccines", Michael Piontek, Managing Director of ARTES.
Annie Van Broekhoven, CEO Q-Biologicals comments: "We will employ our know-how and expertise in the field of bioprocess development, manufacturing and formulation of recombinant antigens to develop a robust production process for VLP based vaccines. Our aim is to generate a generic, low-cost manufacturing process which will result in a high yield of a stable vaccine. Levering our expertise in production of recombinant antigens, we are confident that we will succeed in shortening the process development times considerably, and in doing so drive down development costs and support rapid market introduction."
"We at instrAction will contribute our tailor made but competitively priced platform purification process to this cost sensitive production processes. Our proprietary chromatography phase technology, already being used for purification of commercial biopharmaceuticals and small molecule APIs, allows specific binding of target molecules whether impurity or API, and can be transferred to almost every chromatographic carrier substrate to enable optimum separation and process robustness.", Peter Kallien, CFO of instrAction, pointed out.
About Q-Biologicals
Q-Biologicals is offering services to third parties to help them in speeding up the development and manufacturing of their biological products.
These services are provided in a two-way approach: Process and analytical method development and manufacturing services, including cGMP production, and consultancy.
The principal technological expertise of Q-Biologicals is production of recombinant proteins derived from microbial and eukaryotic systems, purification for research purposes, for toxicological studies as well as for clinical trials, including formulation development and stress stability studies. The company also has an extensive expertise in the manufacturing of viruses and living cells for vaccine purposes and in-depth knowledge of working under pharmaceutical and cGMP quality requirements. Manufacturing can be performed under non-GMP conditions, or if required under cGMP in Q-Biologicals multipurpose state-of-the art GMP manufacturing plant. Both separated manufacturing sites have a biosafety level BL2. Q-Biologicals is a private company financed by VIB, PMV-VINNOF, SOFI and LSRP, and is located in Zwijnaarde-Ghent, Belgium.
About instrAction
The instrAction GmbH, founded in 1997 and located at the technology park Mannheim, is a young, dynamic, and growing company which develops and produces modern chromatographic phases based on an innovative, patent protected technology (instrAction® technology). Further instrAction develops purification processes based on these proprietary phases.
During the past thirteen years a motivated team of scientists has built the base for highly selective separation media. These phases can be used for the isolation and purification of APIs and protein-based therapeutics.instrAction offers screening, feasibility studies, process simulation and scale-up to pilot and process scale. The production of phases at instrAction is orientated to GMP regulations.
Under the title:" development of a virus-like-particle (VLP) based vaccine platform and stable formulation especially suited for the veterinary applications", in short "Plurivax", the EU cooperation is part of the recent 8th EuroTransBio call and will be funded for a three year period supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Flanders (Belgium) agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT)
Nowadays virus-like particles (VLPs) have become a widely used vehicle for the development of vaccines used in humans. Without being infectious, the particles are used to transport foreign antigens in an ideal way to the immune system. For veterinary applications, the applied VLP production process needs to be simplified and optimized. The platform technology and the common production process requires adaption in reference to cost-effectiveness and promptness. Especially the factor "manufacturing cost" is the major driver for a successful market introduction and will influence the acceptance for later necessary mass vaccinations in the veterinary field.
The intent of "Plurivax" is to develop a stable production platform and an adapted high-quality process to have an effective and usable integrated best practice suitable for several veterinary vaccines.
The platform resulting from this project will be the first of its kind in veterinary application and thus opens access to a huge market. A robust, inexpensive vaccine will reduce the need for antibiotic treatment of food animals, thereby directly reducing production costs and improving quality of life for the food animal itself and for the consumer.
"ARTES VLP platform METAVAX® has already been applied to the development of adjuvant-free vaccines against different diseases like avian and swine flu, malaria and HIV. Our yeast expression host Hansenula is the preferred technology for affordable mass vaccination and is recommended by the WHO for mass vaccinations. Together, our platforms build an excellent approach to low-cost mass production of safe and effective vaccines", Michael Piontek, Managing Director of ARTES.
Annie Van Broekhoven, CEO Q-Biologicals comments: "We will employ our know-how and expertise in the field of bioprocess development, manufacturing and formulation of recombinant antigens to develop a robust production process for VLP based vaccines. Our aim is to generate a generic, low-cost manufacturing process which will result in a high yield of a stable vaccine. Levering our expertise in production of recombinant antigens, we are confident that we will succeed in shortening the process development times considerably, and in doing so drive down development costs and support rapid market introduction."
"We at instrAction will contribute our tailor made but competitively priced platform purification process to this cost sensitive production processes. Our proprietary chromatography phase technology, already being used for purification of commercial biopharmaceuticals and small molecule APIs, allows specific binding of target molecules whether impurity or API, and can be transferred to almost every chromatographic carrier substrate to enable optimum separation and process robustness.", Peter Kallien, CFO of instrAction, pointed out.
About Q-Biologicals
Q-Biologicals is offering services to third parties to help them in speeding up the development and manufacturing of their biological products.
These services are provided in a two-way approach: Process and analytical method development and manufacturing services, including cGMP production, and consultancy.
The principal technological expertise of Q-Biologicals is production of recombinant proteins derived from microbial and eukaryotic systems, purification for research purposes, for toxicological studies as well as for clinical trials, including formulation development and stress stability studies. The company also has an extensive expertise in the manufacturing of viruses and living cells for vaccine purposes and in-depth knowledge of working under pharmaceutical and cGMP quality requirements. Manufacturing can be performed under non-GMP conditions, or if required under cGMP in Q-Biologicals multipurpose state-of-the art GMP manufacturing plant. Both separated manufacturing sites have a biosafety level BL2. Q-Biologicals is a private company financed by VIB, PMV-VINNOF, SOFI and LSRP, and is located in Zwijnaarde-Ghent, Belgium.
About instrAction
The instrAction GmbH, founded in 1997 and located at the technology park Mannheim, is a young, dynamic, and growing company which develops and produces modern chromatographic phases based on an innovative, patent protected technology (instrAction® technology). Further instrAction develops purification processes based on these proprietary phases.
During the past thirteen years a motivated team of scientists has built the base for highly selective separation media. These phases can be used for the isolation and purification of APIs and protein-based therapeutics.instrAction offers screening, feasibility studies, process simulation and scale-up to pilot and process scale. The production of phases at instrAction is orientated to GMP regulations.
