www.medicago.com/en
Medicago is developing VLP vaccines to protect against H5N1 pandemic influenza, using a transient expression system which produces recombinant vaccine antigens in non-transgenic plants.
Medicago up 3.5% on award of $21m grant from US Department of Defense
Biotech company Medicago USA Inc. a subsidiary of Medicago Inc. (TSX: MDG), has been awarded a $21 million grant from the US Department of Defense to demonstrate the scalable manufacturing process of its plant-expressed Virus-Like Particles (VLP) vaccines in the U.S.A.
To achieve this, Medicago plans to develop a 90,000 square-foot cGMP facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company intends to scale-up and automate its cGMP process to demonstrate its capacity to produce 10 million doses per month of influenza vaccines with the potential for further expansion in the future.
This project, supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is an integrated effort to deliver effective production of the pandemic influenza in the USA, as The Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP) program looks to identify new ways to produce large amounts of high-quality vaccine protein in less than three months in response to emerging biologic threats. The strategic collaboration is a $42 million project to which DARPA will contribute $21 million, while Medicago will give $7.5 million and Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. will hand out $13.5 million.
To help fund its participation in the project, Medicago has today announced that it will raise $7 million through a share offering, expected to close 19 August.
"We are thrilled to be awarded such significant funding from DARPA for the development of a state-of-the-art plant-based VLP vaccine capability in the U.S.A. as it further validates the growing and strategic interest in our rapid and cost-effective vaccine technology," said the president and CEO of Medicago, Andy Sheldon.
"This DARPA funding is also perfectly in line with our development plan for both our pandemic and seasonal influenza products as we will now have a U.S. facility ready to participate in the $7 billion pandemic and seasonal influenza markets. In addition, our U.S. facility will provide us enhanced access to the various grant programs in the U.S.A. and we will be ready to take part in these additional funding opportunities."
The award of the grant highlights the growing emergence of plant-based platforms as viable technologies, which lend significant benefits over traditional manufacturing methods. During the recent H1N1 influenza outbreak, Medicago's rapid plant-based VLP vaccine technology was able to successfully develop a vaccine candidate in less than a month after identifying the H1N1 strain.
"It's vitally important to our Homeland Security that we have a robust domestic vaccine supply, and this facility will add to our production capacity helping mitigate future threats," said Congressman David Price.
The company`s stock price went up nearly 3.5% on the back of the news to $0.45.
Medicago focuses on providing highly effective and affordable vaccines based on proprietary Virus-Like Particle (VLP) and manufacturing technologies. The company is currently developing VLP vaccines to protect against pandemic and seasonal influenza using a transient expression system which produces recombinant vaccine antigens in non-transgenic plants. Their lead vaccine candidate, H5N1, has successfully completed a Phase I clinical trial and will be entering Phase II in 2010. Its technology has the potential to deliver a vaccine for testing in about a month after the identification and reception of genetic sequences from a pandemic strain.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities is the largest owner and provider of environmentally sustainable real estate, technical infrastructure and services to the life science industry.
