Onyvax consortium gets $3.5M UK govt grant

London, UK-based biotechnology firm Onyvax says that a domestic consortium that it is leading has been awarded a grant by the UK Technology Strategy Board for a L1.8 million ($3.5 million) project that will help develop new generations of cell-based vaccines for cancer.

The initiative will combine micro-scale process engineering technology with both advanced analytical and informatic methods to predict and optimize cell-line performance in large-scale production processes. If successful, the technology will reduce the cost and time involved in selecting and producing new cell lines to form the basis of future cancer vaccines. In addition, the technology could be applied to other areas of cell therapy, including regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy.

Stephen Ward, director of development at Onyvax, said: "following successful results in prostate cancer, Onyvax is applying the cell-based cancer vaccine approach to other cancer types. The micro-scale technology will allow us to predict how a cell line will perform in an intensive manufacturing process. With these new tools, we hope to determine the robustness of a cell line earlier in the development lifecycle and to reject those that are not suitable, thereby reducing the time to market for these innovative medicines."