Medicago USA receives US$3.56m DARPA payment
US firm expects two further milestone payments in first half of 2012
Medicago USA, a developer of vaccines based on proprietary manufacturing technologies and Virus-Like Particles (VLPs), has received its fourth milestone payment of US$3.56m from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This is part of the potential US$21m DARPA milestone awards to be earned by Medicago to demonstrate the scalable manufacturing of its plant-expressed VLP vaccines in the US under a Technology Investment Agreement.
Medicago has received US$19.8m to date for this project, with two milestones remaining.
‘This milestone focused on completing documentation related to a phased commissioning approach to the cGMP facility and equipment, as well as results from recent engineering runs in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina,’ said Mike Wanner, vice president of Medicago’s US Operations.
‘Our US vaccine facility began operations in September 2011, and we continue to expect to complete the fifth and sixth milestones related to this project in the first half of 2012.’
Medicago previously signed a US$21m Technology Investment Agreement with DARPA to develop a 97,000ft2 vaccine facility in Research Triangle Park. This facility will have the capacity to produce 10 million doses/month of influenza vaccines with the potential for further expansion in the future.
