Partners win €1m Eurostars grant
ExpreS2ion, Mucosis and Copenhagen University to develop placental malaria vaccine
Biotech companies ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and Mucosis, with the University of Copenhagen have been awarded a Eurostars grant with of more than €1m for the pre-clinical development of a placental malaria vaccine.
The funding will be used to apply novel vaccine technologies developed at Dutch firm Mucosis and ExpreS2ion, based in Horsholm, Denmark to a malaria antigen developed at the University of Copenhagen in a project funded by The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation. The aim of the project is to provide women in high-risk areas, such as during pregnancy, with lifelong protection against malaria.
Thomas Johnston, ceo of Mucosis, said the collaboration would combine the strengths of the firm’s Mimopath mucosal vaccine platform with the contributions of its partners.
ExpreS2ion has developed a complete proprietary protein expression platform, called ExpreS2, based on engineered Drosophila Schneider-2 (S2) cells, to serve recombinant protein production needs of research teams and recombinant sub-unit vaccine developers.
Charlotte Dyring, ceo of ExpreS2ion, added: ‘This collaboration will allow us to apply glycosylation engineering to the ExpreS2 platform, thus widening the potential of this efficient platform for production of recombinant proteins.’
