15 September 2017 - - Cincinnati, Ohio-based acute and chronic lung disease interventions developer Airway Therapeutics, LLC has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with the German biotechnology company, Glycotope GmbH, the company said.
Under the terms of this agreement, Airway receives worldwide commercial rights to use Glycotope's proprietary cell line technology, GlycoExpress [GEX], to produce AT-100 (rhSP-D), one of Airway's development programmes.
The GlycoExpress technology has been shown to be well suited to the development and large-scale manufacturing of a range of biologics, including antibodies as well as complex and difficult to express proteins.
The Glycotope cell line is designed to optimize the manufacturing of AT-100. Advantages include high-yield production of AT-100, fast production cycles and the provision of human glycosylation patterns on the final protein product. The extraordinarily efficient cell line has produced high-quality protein and will serve as the basis for the production of Airway's protein for use in humans.
Founded in 2011 as a spin-out of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Airway Therapeutics has expertise in protein development for applications in the lungs and pediatrics.
The company is currently developing an investigational product, AT-100, a recombinant form of human surfactant protein-D (rhSP-D), for the prevention of a serious lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia in preterm neonates.
Glycotope focuses on the development of innovative immune-oncological products for the treatment of various cancer types using their GlycoBody and GlycoExpress technologies. Glycotope has currently two products in advanced clinical development.
The company's additional pipeline includes preclinical non-antibody and antibody biopharmaceuticals for various indications.
Glycotope's GlycoExpress platform allows glyco-optimization and high yield production of a variety of fully human glycosylated biopharmaceuticals such as coagulation factors, cytokines, glycoprotein hormones and antibodies by using a toolbox of glyco-engineered proprietary human cell lines that allow for optimisation of a whole series of different determining sugars. In addition, the GEX platform can be used for in process glycosylation control.