Adelaide, South Australia, November 6, 2023, 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-PNTM 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-PNTM, 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-PNTM, 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 BioCina
BioCina is a global end-to-end biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) of choice, offering process development and cGMP clinical & commercial manufacturing of the microbial, plasmid DNA and mRNA modalities. Our US FDA, EMA and TGA approved site in South Australia, is staffed with a tremendously experienced technical and operations team, with most critical SME’s having an average tenure of 15+ years at the Adelaide site. BioCina delivers high-quality, cost-effective CDMO services, including cell line development, process development, and cGMP drug substance manufacturing solutions across the modalities we serve. To address the ever-evolving requirements of our current and future clients, we are adding a 2000L microbial fermenter and large-scale mRNA manufacturing in our Adelaide facility, and we will be establishing a second facility with Mammalian PD and large-scale manufacturing.
To learn more visit https://biocina.com.
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-PNTM, is being developed to protect children and adults against all S. pneumoniae strains, regardless of serotype.
To learn more visit https://gpnvaccines.com
BioCina Contact Details
BioCina Pty Ltd.
8 Dalgleish St, Thebarton, Adelaide, South Australia 5031
Kamal Preet, VP Business Development and Marketing
+61 452 625 977
GPN Vaccine Contact Details
Professor Tim Hirst, tim@gpnvaccines.com, +61 420 942 824
Miriam Dodd, miriam@gpnvaccines.com, +61 411 455 622
Media Contact
Chuck Miller
cmiller@biocina.com
+1 720-560-5580