Algenex, a privately owned biotechnology company, is focused on Research and Development of products to improve Human and Animal Health. Algenex was founded in 2005 as a spin-off of the biotechnology department of INIA (Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria, Madrid. Spain).
Our platform technology is based on producing high quality recombinant proteins for use in vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutic molecules, eliminating the costly process of fermentation through efficient use of insects as small live bioreactors.
For the pharmaceutical industry the production of therapeutic proteins represents a market of billions of dollars. Although small peptides can be synthesized in a cost-effective form, most proteins have to be produced in living cells. Bacteria and yeast are commonly used for the production of moderate to large quantities of low-complexity proteins but currently only transgenic animals or plants and animal cell cultures are utilised for complex proteins. The production of proteins in mammalian cells, apart from being rather expensive, carries significant risk in relation to the transmission of animal-based pathogens. Therefore there is a great interest in identifying new means of producing recombinant proteins. Insects as biofactories to produce pharmaceutical proteins would potentially bypass many of the health risks associated with the use of animal cells or transgenic animals.
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