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news.iBio, a provider of plant-based biotechnology for developing and manufacturing biological products, and Novici Biotech (Novici) have agreed to broaden their commercial collaboration, currently focused on antibodies and certain vaccine products, to include iBio's proprietary IBIO-CFB03 product for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, systemic sclerosis and other fibrotic diseases.
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This expanded program will combine the strength of the iBioLaunch platform with Novici’s patented GRAMMR technology for rapid evolution of gene sequences to significantly increase expression yield of target proteins.
IBIO-CFB03 and related proteins have been produced in plants on the iBioLaunch platform substantially more quickly and cost-effectively than has been possible with traditional methods.
By combining the strengths of the iBioLaunch platform with Novici’s GRAMMR technology, iBio expects to drive production efficiency even further as the fibrosis team initiates expanded animal testing and additional IND-enabling tasks.
In April 2013, iBio announced the achievement of a technology transfer milestone when Novici was able to use the iBioLaunch system in a challenge study, without any involvement of iBio, to reliably replicate production of commercial yields of targeted biotherapeutics and vaccines.
An additional benchmark was achieved in a second live-fire study in May 2013 when Novici used iBioLaunch technology to produce a recombinant vaccine candidate for H7N9 influenza within 21 days of receiving initial antigen sequence information from iBio.
Subsequently, the two companies have worked together on iBio-proprietary and third party antibody product candidates addressing both chronic therapy and acute infectious disease treatment.
Novici has previously applied GRAMMR technology successfully for gene and protein optimization to rapidly increase the expression yields of certain target products without alteration of the structure and function of the proteins themselves.
By increasing the efficiency with which a desired product can be manufactured, without changing the characteristic of the product or established downstream purification processes, manufacturing capacity of existing facilities can be increased when needed to address pandemic or bioterrorism threats or other urgent needs without the costs and time required to enlarge existing or build additional facilities.