£1.1M grant to develop manufacturing for cancer vaccines

Onyvax Ltd, a London-based company specialising in cancer vaccines, is to lead a £1.8 million project to develop new manufacturing techniques for producing cell-based cancer.

The project will combine micro-scale process engineering technology with both advanced analytical and bioinformatics to predict and optimise cell line performance in large scale manufacturing processes.  

If successful, this will reduce the cost and time involved in selecting and producing new cell lines to form the basis of future cancer vaccines.  In addition, the technology could be applied to other areas of cell therapy, including regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy.

Stephen Ward, Director of Development at Onyvax, said, “The micro-scale technology will allow us to predict how a cell line will perform in an intensive manufacturing process. With these new tools, we hope to determine the robustness of a cell line earlier in the development lifecycle and to reject those that are not suitable, thereby reducing the time to market for these innovative medicines.”

The project has received a £1.1 million grant from the UK Technology Strategy Board, supported with additional funding from consortia members.

In addition to Onyvax, the consortium includes the Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, at University College London, which will use its ultra scale-down and whole bioprocessing technology to assess the impact of the bioprocessing environment on vaccine cells.

Another partner LGC Ltd, will apply know-how and capability based on advanced mass spectrometry and array-based platforms for characterisation of both intracellular and extracellular protein markers.

Meanwhile, Nottingham Trent University, will provide proprietary Artificial Neural Network  algorithms to mine the complex multivariate analytical datasets and identify biomarkers indicative of cell robustness.