Cobra Biologics and UK CPI team on AAV vector production platform
The plan is to create a scalable Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) production platform that gene therapy developers working at the CPI’s National Biologics Manufacturing Centre (NBMC) in Darlington can use to manufacture trial supplies.
Cobra CSO Daniel Smith told us the collaboration will combine his firm’s capabilities in bioprocessing, manufacturing and QA with the CPI team’s expertise in high throughput process development and optimisation.
“The collaborative project between Cobra Biologics and CPI’s National Biologics Manufacturing Centre will allow both parties to pursue goals that would be very difficult to achieve separately, bringing strong project management, cross-site working & innovation management.”
He added that: “By working together the timelines for project can be shortened, thereby allowing faster exploitation of the project outputs.”
These outputs will include the system itself and the intellectual property surrounding, ownership of which will be shared.
Smith told us: “Process and platform know how will be retained within Cobra Biologics for the manufacture of AAV products, CPI will gain knowledge of high through-put viral analytics whist validating their role as a technology innovation centre with the UK for bioprocessing innovation.”
The £1.8m ($2.5m) project is being funded to a value of £1.4m by Innovate UK via their 2015 competition for the development of regenerative medicines and cell therapies.
The NBMC is intended to allow firm to assess the manufacturability of innovative biopharmaceutical products.
