Sanofi enters agreement to use E.Coli for expression optimization
AbSci’s agreement with Sanofi aims to optimize two of Sanofi’s in-house proteins that have proved difficult to manufacture and express. AbSci will apply its E. coli manufacturing platform, SoluPro, and its assay optimization system towards optimization.
Sean McClain, founder and CEO of AbSci, said Sanofi and other partner companies will collaborate, “resulting in a cell line and process that accelerates development timelines, reduces manufacturing costs, and increases plant capacity.”
The platform, using what McClain calls, “the simplest, best studied, and least expensive organism, E.Coli,” can produce complex functional proteins from traditional monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to insulin, and enzymes.
“The capability to produce these proteins in E. coli, which traditionally require higher order organisms, is a result of two key innovations: a carefully engineered semi-oxidizing cytoplasm and precision control over protein production rates,” McClain told us.
AbSci has worked with seven different companies, including Sanofi, to develop and discover molecules through this platform. McClain told us that in total, the company has partnered on 16 different molecules. “There is a need for new expression technologies that are capable of producing next-generation antibody and protein scaffolds,” McClain stated. He called SoluPro, a “next-generation expression system” designed to achieve, optimized, scalable, high-quality, high-titer production of any class of biotherapeutics molecules, including next-generation scaffolds.
The collaborative work will take place at AbSci and is funded by Sanofi.
