It appears that the state of the biotech industry continues to improve. We now have a licensed cellular therapy that Dendreon developed, and which has now been sold to another firm that thinks it can make and administer this prostate cancer vaccine more efficiently, plus provide a more effective product. There is also a viral gene vector that has been licensed in Europe, and an application for US licensing has been submitted. Then there is the licensed influenza vaccine that is made with baculovirus technology, plus a second baculovirus-derived flu vaccine that is near licensure. The two companies with these flu vaccines are now charging ahead with their baculovirus expertise to produce Ebola vaccines…
Tag: <span>baculovirus expression</span>
Novavax reported that, in 28 days following public release of the avian influenza A/Anhui/1/2013 (H7N9) virus gene sequences, its recombinant DNA and baculovirus-Spodoptera frugiperda cell culture-based technology was used to produce a virus-like particle vaccine to avian influenza A(H7N9) virus, and murine animal challenge studies were initiated. This report describes Novavax’s manufacturing process and the coordinated timing of critical activities necessary to produce and release a clinical batch of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus virus-like particle vaccine, under current good manufacturing practices, within three months from the time that the virus genomic sequences for this potential pandemic influenza virus were reported…
BacMam transduction technology combines the ability of baculoviruses to maintain and amplify large gene inserts with the desirable post-translational characteristics of proteins expressed in mammalian cell lines. Improved versions of BacMam expression vectors demonstrate increased transduction efficiencies and wider ranges of permissible, mammalian host cells. BacMam technology has been used successfully in the fields of cell-based assays for drug discovery and for imaging of subcellular structures and functions. The development of a large-scale platform for the transient expression of recombinant proteins using BacMam transduction would significantly improve the current transient transfection methodology. We report our initial results obtained using BacMam constructs expressing a humanized rIgG. Serum-free suspension cultures of HEK-293 and CHO-S cells were cotransduced with BacMam viruses at total multiplicity of infection ratios between 10 and 20. Purified yields of 18.9 mg/L were obtained for shake-flask cultures of HEK-293 cells under nonoptimized conditions. These results illustrate the potential of the BacMam system to produce significant quantities of recombinant proteins in mammalian host cells…