Transgene is looking for alternative platform to manufacture clinical-stage cancer and infectious disease vaccines.

Transgene and Vivalis signed a commercial license and collaboration agreement to develop a process using the latter’s EB66® cell line for the manufacture of Transgene’s MVA-based therapeutic vaccines. Transgene currently has three MVA vaccines in late-stage clinical development against cancer and infectious diseases.

The candidates are currently manufactured in chicken embryo fibroblasts. Transgene says, though, that it is looking for alternative manufacturing options with a view to significantly expanding its manufacturing infrastructure over the coming years.

Vivalis’s duck embryonic stem cells-derived EB66 cell lines are available through research and commercial licenses, for the production of viral vaccines, virosomes, VLPs, and recombinant proteins, including monoclonal antibodies. The firm already has some 30 active licenses in place for the cell line, including four signed during 2011.

Just last month the firm granted a commercial license to Japan’s animal vaccines firm Kyoto Biken Laboratories, for use of the cell line to produce a veterinary vaccine. EB66-based vaccines are already in clinical trials in the U.S. and Japan.

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