Purilogics Awarded Grant from NIH to Develop Affinity Chromatography Membranes for Improved Vaccine Purification
As part of the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded Purilogics with a grant to commercialize affinity membrane adsorbers for purification of influenza vaccines.
The $251,170 grant will support Purilogics’ efforts to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel, high-capacity affinity membrane chromatography technology to rapidly purify recombinant hemagglutinin (HA) influenza vaccines with improved specificity, recovery, and biological activity.
The high productivity and scalability of membrane chromatography applied to recombinant vaccines would aid in a rapid response to pandemic strains, should they emerge.
The current COVID19 pandemic is a stark illustration of the need for technology that enables quick vaccine development and rapidly scalable manufacturing processes. The affinity membrane chromatography columns under development in the project address this need by reducing the number of purification steps and enabling 100 times faster processing speed compared to existing technology. Besides flu, the technology could potentially be applied to other vaccine types, such as mumps, coronavirus, norovirus, rotavirus, etc.
The development of new membrane products for vaccine purification is part of Purilogics’ overall vision of providing biopharmaceutical purification scientists and engineers with innovative tools to solve their purification challenges. Other products under development include membranes for purification of viral vectors used in the gene therapy and cell therapy, e.g. lentivirus (LV) and AAVs, as well as plasmid DNA and mRNA. Purilogics’ expert team also offers services for the development of custom affinity membrane chromatography products.
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