Biotechnology company Expression Therapeutics LLC has entered into an agreement with ABL Inc., a biomedical contract research and manufacturing organization that will conduct cell line development studies to improve manufacturability and reduce the costs associated with large-scale production of a recombinant factor VIII (rFVIII) product.
Acknowledging that factor is cost-prohibitive for approximately 70% of the global population of people with hemophilia, Expression has developed an rFVIII therapy with the dual aims of reducing the cost to manufacture it and increasing FVIII product supply. Expression employs the same bioengineered FVIII transgene technology that it uses in its preclinical gene therapy animal studies, which have shown significantly higher FVIII production rates.
“We are very excited about our collaboration with ABL. It will allow us to move our lead products into clinical trials faster and deliver our high expression recombinant factor VIII to patients,” said Christopher Doering, PhD, co-founder and partner of Expression.
“This is a great opportunity for ABL to apply our expertise in cell line development to help advance Expression Therapeutics’ factor VIII product towards clinical production,” said Thomas VanCott, PhD, President and CEO of ABL. “Adapting a cell line from adherent-based to suspension-based growth allows for production to occur in bioreactors, which substantially reduces material and scalability costs as quantity demands increase moving from the research bench to the clinic and eventual commercialization.”
Expression is based in Tucker, GA. ABL headquarters are in Rockville, MD.
Source: Yahoo Finance, August 18, 2014
