OXGENE Introduces TESSA Technology for Robust and Reproducible AAV Manufacture at Scale

Novel, plasmid-free manufacturing system reduces cost of goods and improves AAV quality to enable development of safer gene therapies

OXFORD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- OXGENE™, a biotechnology company designing and developing scalable gene therapy technologies, has today announced the launch of its scalable, plasmid-free manufacturing system for AAV. OXGENE’s new TESSA™ technology addresses industry-wide challenges associated with robust and reproducible AAV manufacture at scale.

Adeno-associated virus, or AAV, is a popular choice of viral vector to deliver gene therapies to patients. However, manufacturing systems have not kept pace with biological advances, leaving these therapies costly, difficult to produce at scale, and subject to inherent batch-to-batch variability.

OXGENE’s TESSA technology overcome manufacturing obstacles by taking advantage of AAV’s natural relationship with another virus — the adenovirus. In nature, AAV co-exists with adenovirus, which provides the ‘help’ AAV needs to replicate. However, as well as replicating the AAV, the adenovirus also replicates itself, leading to high levels of adenoviral contamination .

OXGENE has addressed these challenges by manipulating the adenoviral life cycle so that it can still provide high quality help for AAV replication, but is unable to manufacture itself. Integration of the AAV rep and cap genes into the adenoviral vector means that everything required for AAV production, except the AAV genome, can be provided in a single viral vector. Meanwhile, the AAV genome can either be encoded within a second TESSA vector, in a plasmid, or within an AAV particle itself. Using two TESSA vectors improves yields of AAV2 by 40-fold, accompanied by a 2000-fold increase in particle infectivity compared to a standard three-plasmid manufacturing approach.

OXGENE’s CEO, Dr Ryan Cawood, said: “By combining high AAV yields with scalability, packaging efficiency and increased infectivity, we hope that TESSA technology will help to bring down the overall cost of goods involved in gene therapy development. We hope it will also improve the safety of the final therapeutics, as the higher quality, more infectious AAV resulting from TESSA based manufacture could mean significantly lower effective doses.”

OXGENE has so far developed and validated TESSA vectors for AAV2, 5, 6 and 9 and is now taking requests for service projects and product pre-orders to further develop and evaluate this technology.

For further information about OXGENE TESSA vectors, please visit: www.oxgene.com/TESSA

Follow OXGENE on Twitter @OXGENEofficial and LinkedIn @oxgene

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200922005443/en/