The conventional technology to produce vaccines uses bacteria, yeast or cells from insects or mammals to produce recombinant products. In each case, rather expensive and complex fermentation equipment is needed to scale up the production.
A reduced number of production alternatives are currently available, such as plants, which produce recombinant proteins after genetic modification or transiently by using virus plant vectors. However, high levels of antigen expression are rarely obtained by this methodology, insufficient in many cases to be efficient for oral delivery. Another drawback with this technology is that it requires rather extended development times and currently does not appear to be able to produce low-cost vaccines. A second alternative are transgenic animals, but so far this technology still appears to be rather expensive, difficult to scale up production and requires significant time for development.
Algenex has chosen to develop its technology platform based on insect larvae as live bioreactors. Larvae are extremely efficient in producing recombinant proteins. Generally speaking, larva grow as fast as 5000 times in size in only 3-4 weeks and some insect cells are 1,600 times more productive in protein synthesis than the most productive mammalian cell.
Our aim and objective with the use of this technology platform is to achieve a significant reduction of fixed investment in the set-up of the production of vaccines as well as a substantial lowering of actual per unit cost of manufacturing.
The successful implementation of our platform technology combined with other novel Algenex developments will result in affordable and more widely available vaccines and diagnostics, particularly in those areas of the world with a low average disposable income.
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