publication date: Dec 13, 2011
|
author/source: InVitria
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
recently awarded InVitria a Phase I, Small Business
Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant. The NIH grant will support InVitria's
development of a defined, animal-free cell culture media designed for use in
industrial scale vaccine manufacturing. InVitria's media would fill an unmet need,
as most current commercial vaccines are manufactured using fetal bovine serum
or other animal-derived media components.
Animal-derived media components carry serious
safety concerns involving the risk of viral and prion contamination. Regulatory
bodies, in the US, Europe and Japan have discouraged the use of these
components in biomanufacturing. In addition to safety concerns, animal
components frequently have high batch-to-batch variation, which leads to
unpredictable manufacturing results. "InVitria will leverage its recombinant
cell culture supplements to formulate a cell-based vaccine media that optimizes
productivity, while maintaining a safe biomanufacturing system," said Steve
Pettit, Ph.D., Director of Cell Culture Research and Principal Investigator.
InVitria has collaborated with the Centers
for Disease Control (CDC), Universities, and industry partners to assist with
development and testing of the vaccine media. "One of my goals at the CDC is to
produce an animal-free production system for the manufacture of seasonal,
pre-pandemic, and pandemic influenza seed virus strains. In my previous
efforts, commercial media from other companies did not support the serum-free
growth of MDCK cells as the cells simply became quiescent after a few
passages," said Eduardo O'Neill, Ph.D., Centers for Disease Control. He went on
to say, "(InVitria's) initial results are quite encouraging and we look forward
to testing updated versions..."
"It is well known that serum and animal
components are undesirable in vaccine manufacturing, but current serum-free
formulations have not delivered on cell growth and productivity. InVitria is
addressing this issue with a novel method to achieve the productivity necessary
for industrial scale manufacturing," said Ning Huang, Vice President of
Research and Development.
About InVitria
InVitria develops, manufactures, and
markets a portfolio of products used in cell culture, diagnostics, and
bioproduction. InVitria's products address customer needs for defined,
animal-free cell culture supplements in stem cell technology, regenerative
medicine, biomanufacturing, diagnostics, biopharmaceutical formulation,
cell-based vaccines, and general life science research.
To obtain more information about InVitria's
product solutions, e-mail
info@InVitria.com, visit us online at
www.InVitria.com
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