Edinburgh-based gene control company, Synpromics Ltd has announced a partnership with Lonza Pharma & Biotech to further develop its inducible promoter system and improve manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals.
The 18-month project has been made possible through the award of a £235,000 grant, part of the medicines manufacturing competition from Innovate UK.
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One of the current challenges in the biotech industry is the production of certain biological drugs that can be toxic to host producer cell lines, thereby inhibiting bioproduction. To overcome this challenge, Synpromics has employed its proprietary technology to develop new synthetic inducible/repressible cell-systems that are driven by non-toxic physiological or chemical stimulus, making them ideal for improving productivity and minimising costs during bioproduction. The new systems demonstrate exquisite control of gene expression and offer significant advantages over currently available systems as they are small, can be driven from one plasmid, can incorporate multiple expression cassettes and offer fine-tuning of gene expression.
On launching this key partnership, Dr Michael Roberts, Founder & CSO of Synpromics, commented, “Our primary goal in the first 18 months of this programme will be to validate and comprehensively understand the features and benefits of the Synpromics inducible promoter platform in an industrial setting, using well characterised model proteins. Once validated in an industrially relevant situation, the system will be further tested and incorporated into process development for biomanufacturing novel therapeutic constructs.” He added, “Through this important collaboration, we aim to increase overall flexibility in bioproduction using Synpromics’ inducible promoter platform, and ultimately provide the broader biopharmaceutical industry with powerful new tools to increase the number and type of proteins that can be produced from CHO cells.”
“As part of Lonza Pharma & Biotech’s strategy to drive next-generation biomanufacturing, we will be supporting Synpromics in testing and validating their inducible promoter in our established GS expression system,” said Keith Hutchison, SVP Research & Development at Lonza Pharma & Biotech. He added: “This award is a perfect example of how Innovate UK is encouraging companies to come together to bring new ideas to market.”
This collaboration is the latest in a series of advantageous partnerships for Synpromics, furthering its growth and development as a company, and distinguishing Synpromics as an industry leader in the cell and gene therapy, and bioprocessing sectors.
