ReiThera and Exothera entered into a collaboration agreement to develop a large-scale, low cost per dose manufacturing process for the production of ReiThera’s novel vaccines.
The collaboration will be financed by a €3 million grant awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop and deliver new vaccines based on ReiThera’s GRAd technology platform, including against COVID-19 and HIV, mostly for Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMIC) in Africa.
The scale-up manufacturing process will leverage Exothera’s unique expertise using the NevoLineTM upstream platform (integrating the intensified structural fixed-bed scale-XTM nitro bioreactor), developed by Exothera’s sister company, Univercells Technologies.
Under the terms of the agreement, Exothera will scale up the proprietary cell line into the NevoLine and infect them with GRAd vector to create the bulk vaccine product, which ReiThera will then purify. The viral bulk generated after the infection will be purified by a process developed by ReiThera.
ReiThera will start with its GRAd vector currently used in its COVID-19 vaccine candidate (GRAd-COV2) for the initial process development set-up and transition it into final form for further clinical trial purposes in its GMP manufacturing facility.
“This second Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant, following an initial grant to ReiThera in November 2021 to support the development of the GRAd platform, provides further validation of ReiThera’s innovative technology and underscores our technical expertise in clinical manufacturing and bio-risk management,” said Stefano Colloca, CTO and co-founder of ReiThera.
“Combining our process know-how with Univercells Technologies’ Nevoline will provide Low- and Middle-Income countries with access to much needed solutions for unmet medical needs such as HIV as well as against the current global pandemic,” added José Castillo, chairman of Exothera.
