The protocols for viral vector and viral vaccine manufacturing are similar although the latter has a longer history. Both have traditionally used adherent cell lines in cell factories or roller bottles. The challenge with these systems is that in order to increase volume they can only be scaled out rather than scaled up. Scaling out is such an inefficient process that it doesn’t decrease the cost of manufacturing significantly. Moreover, high demand can lead to shortages in supplies such as plastics, and the process is environmentally wasteful as well.
Suspension cell cultures are ideally suited for for scaling-up and process intensification to meet the growing demand for product that can be made by the host cells. By moving into suspension culturing, companies can produce more product at lower cost. As gene therapy development is booming, there is an exponentially growing need for rapidly produced viral vectors at the lowest cost possible to make treatment available for large numbers of patients as soon as possible.
The VHU® is specifically designed to help the industry achieve both these goals through a perfusion-based process that allows increases in viral vector yield by 10-fold compared to batch processes as a result of increased cell density as well as continuous harvesting of the labile viral vector/vaccine.
The Artemis process team guides customers through the decision making process by finding out how much they need to produce, by when, and what is their current process.
By discussing these topics, the customers can then come up with a scale-up plan with suspension cells. For example, in some cases it may be advisable to start with the VHU1 to perform low cost optimisations while in other cases where more information about the process is available, one could immediately start with the VHU2.
Artemis VHU® technology breaks with tradition of adherent and/or batch processes by offering a new, much more efficient and scalable approach of labile viral vector or viral vaccine production through a perfusion-based process. Apart from manufacturing success, this also leads to substantial costs savings in capital and operational expenses and in our estimations, time to market could be cut by 50%.
With a growing list of customers who are actively involved in using the VHU® for their viral vector or viral vaccine manufacturing platforms, it is only a matter of time before our perfusion technology will become universally adopted over e.g. batch processes Artemis Biosystems will be more than happy to discuss your manufacturing needs with you if you are interested in learning more about this powerful new technology.