As part of the agreement, PBL will use its ligand design and screening capabilities to identify Mimetic affinity ligands with the ability to capture and purify the new vaccine product.
If the ligands are suitable, they will be further developed to provide an affinity resin product and associated process conditions to be used in commercial vaccine manufacturing by PBL’s client.
Under the deal, ProMetic will be eligible to receive initial service revenues of about $1.6m over the next 12 months assuming successful completion of ongoing milestones, with work commencing immediately.
The deal is also expected to lead to a subsequent long-term agreement for the production and supply of the affinity resin for use in scale-up and commercial production of the vaccine product.
PBL CEO Steve Burton said the company’s affinity technology has showed capability to develop affinity purification solutions for almost any target biomolecule including genetically engineered viral surface proteins which form the basis of a growing number of vaccine products.
"Vaccines are produced in large quantities and must be highly purified to avoid any unwanted side-effects which are generally considered to be unacceptable in the case of a therapeutic product given to healthy individuals to protect against viral infection," Burton said.
ProMetic president and CEO Pierre Laurin said the company is happy to be adding a new client for which it will have the opportunity to demonstrate the outstanding performance of its purification technologies.
"We believe our bioseparation solutions to be especially well suited for the purification of products manufactured in large quantities given the superior purification yield and economic advantages they provide," Laurin said.