Sanofi Pasteur to Evaluate Leukocare’s Stabilization Technology for Vaccines

Sanofi Pasteur and Leukocare biotechnology inked a cooperation agreement through which Sanofi’s vaccines division will evaluate Leukocare’s Stabilizing and Protecting Solutions (SPS) platform for improving the shelf-life of certain vaccine formulations.

Leukocare’s postcoating technology is designed to both stabilize biotherapeutic and diagnostic products and protect them against the otherwise damaging effects of terminal sterilization by irradiation or ethylene oxide. The firm says the platform can be used to help preserve the activity of biologics during processing for dry storage, and is applicable to lyophilization, air drying, spray drying or microcrystal powders.

Leukocare specializes in technologies for biological functionalization of surfaces and for product stabilization. The firm offers collaborative research and development services that exploit its core technologies in the fields of biofunctional surface engineering, biopharmaceuticals, development and co-development of combination products, as well as related preclinical and clinical studies.

The SPS technology has been tailored to specific product types. SPS-CP is designed for stabilizing and protecting combination products. SPS-BP is adapted specifically for the stabilization and protection of biopharmaceutical formulations and galenics. SPS-LT is designed to stabilize and protect diagnostic surface coating.

In November 2010 Leukocare teamed up with sterilization services firm Sterigenics, for a collaboration that aims to combine the SPS platform with Sterigenics irradiation technologies and establish new sterilization procedures for biotherapeutics, including therapeutic antibodies.