Military Research Group Uses ViroCyt Technology To Accelerate Ebola Research

BOULDER, CO--(Marketwired - March 11, 2015) - ViroCyt, Inc., the leader in rapid virus quantification, announced today that the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has published a scientific article in the journal Viruses titled “Evaluation of ViroCyt® Virus Counter® for Rapid Filovirus Quantification.”

As stated in the paper, “Development and evaluation of medical countermeasures for diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics requires production of standardized, reproducible, and well characterized virus preparations. The Virus Counter assay is simple to conduct, training is minimal, and no virus-specific reagents are required. Due to the use of an instrument for analysis, quantification is non-subjective and requires less than 10 minutes per reaction.”

According to Dr. Wafaa Mahmoud, Manager of Product and Upstream Process Development at Protein Sciences Corporation, “As an original beta site and early adopter of the system, it’s clear to me that this article proves the importance of using the Virus Counter as an effective, comparable and fast tool for counting viruses such as Ebola. The authors have shown how the reproducibility of the results from applying the Virus Counter technique is comparable to several traditional quantitation assays and procedures -- such as plaque assay and qRT-PCR -- which are used widely for this pathogen. The ability to monitor changes in the properties of the virus in a short period of time facilitates the rapid preparation of highly standardized and validated virus stocks for subsequent use in pivotal efficacy studies.” Protein Sciences Corporation manufactures the recently approved Flublok® influenza vaccine and is currently developing a novel Ebola vaccine using its proprietary Baculovirus Expression Vector System or BEVS.

“This important milestone is yet another in support of ViroCyt’s goal to deliver meaningful improvements in the area of virus quantification. These pivotal studies are an integral part of our path toward the establishment of the Virus Counter as the standard with regulated government institutions. We look forward to advancing the platform through further development of a strong, innovative reagent stream,” stated Dr. Michael Olszowy, ViroCyt Chief Technology Officer.

The third generation of the Virus Counter, the 3100, was launched in March of 2014 with the primary goal of providing a system capable of withstanding the rigors of biologics manufacturing environments. This includes increased stability, GMP compliance and the addition of an autosampler for walkaway processing of up to 96 samples per run. Virus Counters are in use at many of the world’s top companies, regulatory agencies, government research institutes and universities. Examples include Sanofi Pasteur, Protein Sciences, GE Healthcare, CBER/FDA, NIAID and The University of Maryland.

About ViroCyt, Inc.

ViroCyt, Inc. was created with the goal of bringing game-changing solutions to the Life Science industry. Our primary focus is replacing outdated technologies that slow down the pace of virus-related research and product development. Additional information can be found at http://www.virocyt.com.