Biologics Production Project Receives £217K Funding

Contract and Development Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO) Cobra Biologics and researchers at Manchester University have been awarded collaborative funding of £217K as one of 23 projects to share almost £20M from the Innovate UK / Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) supported Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst.

The joint project, PeriTune, aims to address key bottlenecks and manufacturability challenges of recombinant proteins used in biopharmaceutical medicines and industrial biotechnology through development of a protein expression optimisation platform based around technology developed at Manchester. Providing cellular-level tuneable control of gene expression, the University’s RiboTite capability will be used to match expression to the periplasmic secretion capabilities of E.coli production cells. At high levels of recombinant protein overexpression the secretion pathways can become overloaded, affecting product titres and cell viability. Clones developed through the optimisation platform at The University of Manchester will be validated, demonstrated at scale, and assessed for manufacturability within Cobra Biologics.

The PeriTune project will allow Cobra Biologics to investigate the use of the RiboTite technology in controlling levels of secreted protein production in E.coli, and also the manufacturing robustness of the system during fermentation scale up.

Dr Daniel Smith, CSO Cobra Biologics, said: “We are looking forward to collaborating closely with Dr Neil Dixon, his team at the University of Manchester, and their innovative RiboTite technology. This is a very exciting project for Cobra, as it has the potential to expand our current microbial production toolbox, providing alternative routes for controlling protein expression for a wide range of potential new protein-based therapeutics.”

Dr Neil Dixon, University of Manchester commented: “We are very pleased that this funding will enable us to collaborate with Cobra Biologics and support the on-going translation of our research into industry.  We believe the technology platform could make a significant impact on issues involved in the production of biopharmaceutical medicines and other Industrial Biotechnology products, which in turn would reduce manufacturing costs and enable de-risking of early product development projects.”