CONAGEN GRANT AWARD UNLOCKS NEW MARKETS FOR MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES

KUALA LUMPUR, March 29 (Bernama) -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given a grant to Conagen to support further development of its Conamax(TM) platform for the production of accessible low-cost and high-quality monoclonal antibodies, benefitting developing countries and patients globally.

“The Conamax platform was originally conceived to address this global unmet need, so we are thrilled to have the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help develop affordable antibody therapeutics,” said vice president of innovation at Conagen, Casey Lippmeier, Ph.D.

The high cost of monoclonal antibody (mAb) production makes blockbuster drugs expensive, limiting the markets in which these molecules can be applied, and limiting access to large patient populations in developing and industrialised countries.

With rapid cell growth, human-compatible glycan structures, and demonstrated world-scale fermentation bioprocesses, the Conamax platform holds several advantages over Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines and other mammalian expression systems, as well as other microbial platforms.

According to a statement, the foundation grant funds the bench-scale development of a proof-of-concept study of a continuous purification process, customised to inputs from Conamax and potentially other microbial host organisms.

With large-scale advancements, Conagen envisions that this process will be capable of continuously purifying mAbs from material generated in bioreactors with volumes greater than 250,000 litres.

As a significant advantage, the process will not require expensive binding proteins or other expensive column purification steps. This process will enable economies of scale which are not accessible to CHO or other mammalian-derived cell systems while also providing rapid, high-throughput purification of large amounts of antibody.

Continued growth in sales of currently approved mAb products, along with more than 1,200 mAb product candidates currently in development — many for multiple indications — will continue to drive the overall sales of all biopharmaceutical products.

More details at www.conagen.com.

-- BERNAMA