Accelerating Life Sciences R&D

California-based Aragen Bioscience and Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd are collaborating for the development of multiple stable cell lines to support Serum’s HIV program.

The Serum and Aragen partnership is committed to ‘Accelerating Life Sciences R&D’ with the goal of developing affordable monoclonal antibodies that improve the quality of human life, said the two companies in a release on 8 Jan 2020.

Aragen will leverage its expertise with their RapTr™ platform utilizing proprietary vectors and CHO DG44 host cells to develop the cell lines.

Combined with the analytics platform, Aragen is set to provide Serum with high expressing cell lines enabling Serum to quickly move their program forward into Manufacturing.

With a proven track record of more than 50 years in developing affordable medicines, Serum will focus its efforts on advancing these novel molecules into impactful vaccines or therapies that treat and prevent diseases world-wide.

“We are delighted to partner with the global leader in Vaccines,” said Manni Kantipudi, Chairman, Aragen, & Chief Executive Officer, GVK BIO.

“The Aragen team is recognized globally for its ability to clone and express challenging proteins. Through this collaboration with Serum, we expect to build on this expertise to develop and deliver affordable biologicals.”

“SIIPL is very pleased to join hands with Aragen. SIIPL is already in collaboration with IAVI and Scripps Research for discovery of novel monoclonal antibodies against HIV,” said Adar Poonawalla, CEO, SIIPL of Hyderabad.

“With our manufacturing capabilities and this collaboration with Aragen to develop stable cell lines, SIIPL will be able to provide cost effective monoclonal antibodies against HIV for the developing and developed world,” he said.

GVK BIO, a leading Contract Research & Development Organization servicing the global Life-sciences industry, is headquartered in Hyderabad, India with operations in five sites including Aragen Bioscience in California.

Serum was founded in 1966 by Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla with a mission of manufacturing life-saving immuno-biologics. Serum is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold globally (more than 1.3 billion doses). fiinews.com