Innovate UK contributed £1.5 million for AAV manufacturing

Innovate UK has provided £1.5 million to help research organisation Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and Pall Biotech a supplier of filtration, separation and purification products, to work with Cobra Biologics to investigate continuous manufacturing of adeno-associated virus for gene therapies, and to develop analytical techniques and manufacturing approaches to increase process yields.
CEO of CGT Catapult, Keith Thompson, said: “Our shared vision is to take a major step towards continuous processing for gene therapy production. As we move forward, we will create a scalable continuous process that increases efficiencies in time and cost, to make commercialisation of gene therapies safer, faster and cheaper than ever before.”
Pall Biotech’s VP and GM, Mario Philips, said: “Yields for downstream processing of AAV are currently very low and the production process is costly in both time and consumables. With this project, we hope to advance the AAV purification process and affect a 25% or more step change in purification yields. The Pall Cadence BioSMB system will be investigated for its ability to increase yields and decrease cost, while using novel analytical procedures to enhance the purification process.”