MdBio Foundation Awards Final Milestone Payment to BioFactura

Published: Sep 12, 2012

ROCKVILLE, MD--(Marketwire - September 12, 2012) -

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MdBio Foundation today awarded a final Project Accelerator Award milestone payment of $50,000 to BioFactura for its work in developing the StableFast™ Biomanufacturing Platform. StableFast™ is a proprietary cell culture system developed by BioFactura to improve yield, speed and ease of manufacturing biological drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and biosimilars. Under the terms of the Project Accelerator Award from the MdBio Foundation, BioFactura has made significant progress in developing a system that is highly efficient and expected to be used in the production of biosimilar drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.

"The MdBio Foundation was one of the earliest investors in BioFactura's StableFast™ technology. The foundation's continued support has been instrumental in completing the commercialization of our biomanufacturing platform and bringing a valuable alternative to pharmaceutical companies developing new, lower cost biosimilar versions of today's life saving drugs," said Darryl Sampey, BioFactura's president and CEO.

"We are pleased the MdBio Foundation has been able to help fund BioFactura's development of an improved biomanufacturing process and look forward to its adoption for low cost manufacturing of biosimilars," said J.J. Finkelstein, Chairman of the MdBio Foundation Board of Directors. "With the award to BioFactura, the foundation has now completed its Project Accelerator Award Program, which originated about 15 years ago and was responsible for providing funding for 30 bioscience companies in Maryland."

About MdBio Foundation: The MdBio Foundation is a private 501(c)3 charitable organization that provides and supports bioscience awareness, education and workforce development in Maryland. It has been instrumental in providing companies with business development and information services in addition to education and workforce development programs. Its signature program, the MdBioLab, is a state-of-the-art mobile laboratory that travels to Maryland high schools each year providing students with a unique bioscience laboratory experience. MdBio Foundation is also developing an online education platform, called MdBioSphere™ that seeks to advance student comprehension in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and revitalize student interest in science-related careers through the use of familiar gaming technology. The Foundation is an affiliate of the Tech Council of Maryland. To learn more visit www.MdBioFoundation.org

About BioFactura: BioFactura offers companies and government agencies developing biological drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies and vaccines, shorter time-to-market, reduced costs, and high potency/fidelity candidates through the application of its proprietary technologies including its StableFast™ Biomanufacturing Platform. BioFactura's team has extensive biopharmaceutical industry experience in bioprocess development, scale-up, and cGMP manufacturing. The Company's service capabilities range from mammalian and microbial cell line generation to upstream and downstream bioprocesses and analytical assay development. The StableFast™ Biomanufacturing Platform is a novel system to rapidly generate stable NS0 cell lines for biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The system includes a chemically-defined, serum- and cholesterol-free production medium and pre-adapted parental cells, modular expression vectors that utilize a patented selection strategy and growth supplement that permits rapid generation and cloning of cell lines. This platform is simple to use, fast, and productive. A clonal production cell line can be developed and scaled up to yield over one gram of product in less than eight weeks.