CAP Cells Suitable For Commercial Vaccine Production?

Cologne, Germany, September 28, 2010 / b3c newswire / – CEVEC Pharmaceuticals, the developer of an extremely potent protein expression system based on human CAP cells, announced today that CAP cells produce high virus titers upon infection with influenza strains. The virus titers are as good as or even higher than with MDCK and Vero cells, host cells currently used for influenza vaccine production. The data were obtained in a collaborative project with Prof. Dr. Reichl at the Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg, an internationally renowned expert for design and optimization of vaccine production processes in Germany.

CAP cells were infected with various human, equine and swine influenza strains and the virus titers compared to MDCK suspension cells.

“CAP cells could prove to be of significant advantage for the production of flu vaccines,” said Dr. Rainer Lichtenberger, CEO of CEVEC. “The achieved virus yields give hope for a more efficient production than with the help of conventional egg-based technology.”

“The infected CAP cells grow rapidly in serum-free and commercially available media. With an optimized medium even higher virus titers can be expected,” added Wolfgang Kintzel, CEVEC’s Chief Commercial Officer and Managing Director.

"The human suspension cell line CAP has an enormous potential for establishment of state-of-the-art influenza vaccine manufacturing processes," said Prof. Reichl from the Max-Planck Insitute in Magdeburg.

CAP is the last independent human cell line for the production of vaccines and recombinant proteins.

CAP cells are a human immortalized cell line derived from primary human amniocytes that meet highest ethical standards. CAP cells grow in serum-free suspension cultures, allow stable protein production, and show human-like post-translational modifications and authentic human glycosylation patterns.

CAP® is a trademark of CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, all rights reserved,

About CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH - www.cevec-pharmaceuticals.com
CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, operational since 2004 was founded by a group of internationally renowned scientists and clinicians from the University of Cologne. Based on their experience and their longstanding collaborative work, they had perceived a lack of innovative expression systems for more efficient production of biologics such as recombinant proteins or gene therapy vectors. CEVEC’s novel proprietary human CAP® and CAP-T® expression systems are ideal for manufacturing complex and difficult to express biopharmaceutical molecules with authentic human glycosylation patterns. The immortalized cells are derived from primary human amniocytes and meet highest ethical standards. Already adapted to serum-free growth conditions, they can be very efficiently transfected with commercially available transfection reagents and are optimized to grow in a variety of flask/wave formats up to large-scale processing in bioreactors. CEVEC offers flexible licensing arrangements for CAP and CAP-T. Additionally, co-development opportunities are available for selected complex therapeutic proteins made with the CAP Technology to address attractive target markets.