Medicago USA awarded third DARPA milestone payment

Published: 21-Jun-2011

US vaccine facility projected to be operational in second half of 2011


Medicago USA, a subsidiary of Canadian biotechnology firm Medicago, has received a third milestone payment of US$5.6m under a Technology Investment Agreement signed last year with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The payment is part of the potential US$21m milestone payments to be earned by Medicago to demonstrate the scalable manufacturing of its plant-expressed VLP vaccines in the US.

Medicago has so far received US$16.3m for this project.

‘This milestone focused on final scale-up plans and documentation to support the technology transfer to our cGMP facility in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina,’ said Mike Wanner, vice president US Operations of Medicago USA.

‘We continue to meet all milestones to date for this fast track project and our US vaccine facility is projected to be operational during the second half of 2011.’

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