EU patent grant for ARTES Biotechnology METAVAX®

Langenfeld, Germany: – ARTES Biotechnology, the German-based specialist in microbial process development and technology transfer for the pharmaceutical industry, has received a new EU-based grant of patent for its well-proven virus-like-particle (VLP) technology platform METAVAX®.

“The new patent integrates exactly into our existing patent portfolio and will further strengthen our technology offer”, said Dr. Melanie Piontek, Business Development Director of ARTES.

“In combination with our proprietary yeast expression technology our antigen presentation platform METAVAX® is an excellent and unique tool for the development of effective, safe and affordable vaccines,” said Dr. Piontek.

METAVAX® applications

METAVAX® is ARTES’ platform technology for vaccine development presenting antigens on the surface of virus like particles (VLP). ARTES combines this platform with the WHO-recommended yeast organism Hansenula polymorpha for the development of safe and efficient vaccines. METAVAX® is being applied in several client projects as well as in several in-house research projects.

Recently, ARTES has enhanced the VLP based vaccine platform to develop processes especially suited for veterinary applications as part of the “Plurivax” project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the 8th EuroTransBio tranche of research projects.

“Our intellectual property strategy is to provide multiple layers of protection for our technology platform portfolio. With this new patent, we have additional reinforcement to our existing patent estate,” said Dr. Melanie Piontek.

About ARTES Biotechnology

ARTES Biotechnology is a pharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) that provides cell line and process development for bio-pharmaceutical products. The company is a well-established partner for many of the biggest names in the industry, with more than 20 years of business experience, a track record of products developed for and marketed by clients as well as safe, reliable and highly competitive microbial production platforms.

ARTES specializes in recombinant protein production, process and vaccine development from microbial expression systems, marketing the unique METAVAX® (dHepB-VLP) technology in combination with yeast expression.

This platform is applicable for large and multimeric antigens and able to create chimeric VLPs. In addition to genetic engineering, the company provides fermentation and downstream process development, analytical assay development and production cell line characterization.

ARTES operates worldwide from its 850m2 S1 facilities in Langenfeld, from where it also offers cell line engineering based on yeast (Hansenula polymorpha) and bacterial (E. coli and Bacillus) expression platforms, lab scale up- and downstream process development, supply of non-GMP bulk material (API) for activity and toxicity tests and technology transfer to cGMP facilities and scale-up support.