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iBio soars on news of global alliance with GE Healthcare for vaccine technology

Published: 08:36 26 Jul 2012 EDT

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Plant-based drug developer iBio (NYSE:IBIO) saw its shares soar in early New York trade after it announced a global alliance with the healthcare business of industrial conglomerate General Electric (NYSE:GE).

The group has secured GE Healthcare as partner to commercialize plant-based technologies for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines.

The alliance builds on the existing development and marketing agreement between the two companies announced in 2010.

It combines iBio's plant-based vaccine manufacturing platform iBioLaunch with GE Healthcare's capabilities in start-to-finish technologies for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

The news lifted iBio’s stock by 17.3 percent in early Wall Street deals to US$1.29.

Financial details of the latest agreement were not disclosed.

Ibio said its research and development collaborator, Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB), will continue to play a key role in advancing the iBioLaunch platform. 

The iBioLaunch is a proprietary gene expression technology that induces plants to rapidly produce high levels of proteins such as vaccines, in a process which can be easily and reliably scaled-up in low cost, controlled-growth facilities.

GE Healthcare develops and produces technologies and tools used for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, vaccines and other protein-based therapeutics.

GE Healthcare's global team of bioengineers and bioprocessing scientists are working with researchers from iBio and CMB to develop a single, flexible facility which could significantly reduce the capital and operating costs of biotherapeutic and vaccine manufacture compared with traditional animal cell and microbial based methods, the group said in a statement.

The iBioLaunch platform also has the potential to manufacture proteins which cannot be commercially produced in any other system.

Ibio said worldwide demand for biopharmaceuticals and vaccines is increasing dramatically, driven by ageing populations and the global effort to reduce the incidence of vaccine preventable diseases.

In work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, iBio's plant-based technology has been used to produce an avian influenza vaccine candidate that recently completed a successful Phase I clinical trial.

The iBioLaunch platform was also used to produce a candidate vaccine against H1N1 influenza, for which a human Phase I trial was successfully completed in March 2012.

Ibio chairman and chief executive Robert B Kay said: "We look forward to working together on the development of a flexible and cost-effective plant-based manufacturing platform that has the potential to assist in the global effort to increase access to biotherapeutics and help reduce the incidence of vaccine preventable diseases."

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