Avecia Biotechnology Inc. Launches pAVEway(TM) - Advanced Protein Expression for the Manufacture of Biopharmaceuticals

TEES VALLEY, England, May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Avecia Biologics has announced the launch of its new biotherapeutic protein production technology - pAVEway(TM).

Avecia will officially unveil the addition of pAVEway to its growing portfolio of advanced technology solutions for the manufacture of therapeutic proteins at the BIO 2007 convention in Boston, Massachusetts (7-9 May).

The new technology enables class-leading (>10g/L) microbial production of a wide range of therapeutically useful proteins (vaccines, cytokines, growth factors, etc).

pAVEway will also help to reduce the time to market and cost, while increasing flexibility and maintaining Avecia's high quality standards.

Achieving high levels of active protein during fermentation is often a bottleneck in the development of an efficient production process. The choice of expression system, host strain and fermentation conditions has a profound effect on the overall quantity and quality of protein produced.

Consequently, it has a major impact on the success of scale-up from R&D to large scale cGMP manufacturing, and ultimately on the cost of goods (CoG). Selection of the most appropriate and regulatory compliant production system for biopharmaceutical target proteins can be an empirical and time consuming approach. This can ultimately increase the time to market.

Avecia's scientists have used their expertise and understanding of the expression kinetics of existing state-of-the-art microbial systems to design and build a range of innovative expression vectors, to select a range of suitable host cells and to optimise the fermentation processes. These systems are combined in the pAVEway platform, which offers a way for fast track process creation and development. Among the unique features of pAVEway are the fully repressible basic expression and the modulatable expression induction. This enables the high level expression of a wider range of proteins than ever before.

Dr. Mark Carver, Chief Scientific Officer at Avecia Biologics, said: "pAVEway offers a highly versatile platform, including a solution for E.coli - the most widely used microbial expression host - and Pseudomonas. pAVEway provides Avecia's customers with maximum flexibility when making the critical decision on the choice of expression system and offers significant benefits in reducing process development times and costs whilst achieving high titre and quality."

For more information see Avecia Biologics at Booth 407, or www.avecia.com

Editor's note: Avecia Biologics is a leader in the process development and manufacture of biologics, offering proprietary expression and gene manipulation systems for microbial- and mammalian-derived biopharmaceuticals, with cGMP manufacturing in the North East of the UK for recombinant protein biologics offering flexible capacity from 100L - 5000L for all stages of the product pipeline.

CONTACT: For further information contact: Bridget Hall, CommunicationsManager, Tel: +44-(0)1642-367320, Mobile: +44-(0)7796-938929, Fax:+44-(0)1642-364463, E-mail: bridget.hall@avecia.com; Paul White,Recognition PR, Tel: +44-(0)325-363436, Fax: +44-(0)161-614-1450, E-mail:paul.white@recognitionpr.co.uk