GE Healthcare to sell yellow fever vaccine IP to PnuVax

GE Healthcare has announced the sale of IP rights relating to an inactivated yellow fever vaccine to the vaccine and biopharmaceutical company PnuVax.

Under the terms of the deal, PnuVax will purchase a GE Healthcare Life Sciences FlexFactory biomanufacturing platform, and the two companies are now planning a collaboration to optimise the manufacturing process for the new vaccine.

The inactivated cell-culture based vaccine, XRX 001, is designed to reduce the incidence of serious side effects associated with the live vaccine. It was purchased by GE Healthcare as a part of the acquisition of Xcellerex in 2012.

Positive results from a phase I clinical trial of the drug were announced in 2011, showing it was associated with a 100 percent seroconversion rate. Since then, GE Healthcare has continued to optimise the manufacturing process for the vaccine.

Parrish Galliher, chief technology officer for the Upstream BioProcess business at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: “We are delighted PnuVax will be continuing the development of XRX 001 and that they have chosen GE Healthcare to help design and optimise the manufacturing process for this vaccine."

FlexFactory is a start-to-finish biomanufacturing platform based on single-use technologies. It is designed to increase productivity by simplifying and accelerating bioprocessing and reducing time-consuming routines such as cleaning and sterilisation.