BioCina Pty Ltd., a global end-to-end biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), announced the expansion of their partnership with GPN Vaccines Ltd.
GPN Vaccines is a biotechnology company developing a proprietary engineered whole-cell vaccine called Gamma-PN™ against Streptococcus pneumoniae. This bacterium is responsible for causing life-threatening infections such as pneumonia, bacteraemia and meningitis, each year causing up to 2 million deaths worldwide.
GPN's vaccine technology is a proprietary engineered strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae that lacks capsular polysaccharide and expresses surface proteins common to all serotypes, inducing broad-spectrum T- and B-cell immunity to cross-reactive protein antigens of the bacteria, making this vaccine outperform against currently approved vaccines.
BioCina will manufacture large-scale cGMP batches for this program. The BioCina facility in Adelaide, Australia has a rich history of developing and manufacturing recombinant proteins in microbial systems such as E. coli.
BioCina's Chief Executive Officer, Mark W. Womack stated, "We are extremely proud that GPN Vaccines has asked us to further scale-up the production of Gamma-PN™, which has the potential to protect so many lives against a broad range of serotypes not covered by any current vaccines."
GPN Vaccines' Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Professor Tim Hirst said, "We are delighted to be progressing with the next stage of cGMP manufacture of our innovative whole cell pneumococcal vaccine, Gamma-PN™, with BioCina as the CDMO of choice. They successfully optimised the manufacture of Phase 1 material, and we now look forward to working with them to deliver a scaled-up process for the manufacture of Phase 2 material suitable for clinical evaluation worldwide."
About GPN Vaccines:
GPN Vaccines is a public (unlisted) biotechnology company developing a vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae, which is responsible for causing life-threatening pneumonia, bacteremia, and meningitis, as well as otitis media (middle ear infections). Each year it causes 1-2 million deaths worldwide, killing more children than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. There are now more than 100 different serotypes of S. pneumoniae and the best vaccine currently on the market only protects against 20 of them. GPN Vaccines' product, called Gamma-PN™, is being developed to protect children and adults against all S. pneumoniae strains, regardless of serotype.
For more information please visit, https://gpnvaccines.com
