iBio Inc. and
GE Healthcare announced a new global alliance to commercialize plant-based
technologies for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines. The
alliance builds on the existing development and marketing agreement between the
two companies announced in 2010 and combines iBio’s plant-based vaccine
manufacturing platform, iBioLaunch, with GE Healthcare’s capabilities in
start-to-finish technologies for biopharmaceutical manufacturing. iBio’s
R&D collaborator, Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB)
will continue to play a key role in advancing the iBioLaunch platform. Financial
terms were not disclosed.
The iBioLaunch platform is a proprietary gene expression
technology that induces plants to rapidly produce high levels of proteins such as
vaccines, in a process which can be easily and reliably scaled-up in low cost,
controlled-growth facilities. GE Healthcare develops and produces
start-to-finish technologies and tools used for the manufacture of
biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, and other protein-based therapeutics. GE
Healthcare’s global team of bioengineers and bioprocessing scientists are
working with researchers from iBio and CMB to develop a single, flexible
facility which could significantly reduce the capital and operating costs of
biotherapeutic and vaccine manufacture compared with traditional animal cell
and microbial based methods. The iBioLaunch platform also has the potential to
manufacture proteins which cannot be commercially produced in any other system.
Worldwide
demand for biopharmaceuticals and vaccines is increasing dramatically, driven
by ageing populations and the global effort to reduce the incidence of vaccine
preventable diseases. In work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, iBio’s plant-based technology has been used to produce an avian
influenza vaccine candidate that recently completed a successful Phase I
clinical trial. The iBioLaunch platform was also used to produce a candidate
vaccine against H1N1 influenza, for which a human Phase I trial was
successfully completed in March, 2012. The alliance between the two
companies aligns with GE’s healthymagination initiative, which focuses on
reducing cost, increasing access and improving quality in health care.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
