SIRION demonstrates readiness to meet soaring viral vector demand

Martinsried, Germany: – Specialist viral vector supplier Sirion Biotech will attend a prestigious scientific conference in Vienna to demonstrate its readiness to help meet the rapidly rising demand for AAV, lentivirus and other technologies in clinical applications.

Sirion will participate in the upcoming Annual Meeting of the German Society for Gene Therapy (DG-GT e.V.) at University of Vienna at the end of the month.

The meeting will hear numerous indicators that virus vector technology is rapidly gaining traction in the life sciences. A recent report by US investment bank Piper Jaffray said uptake was likely to accelerate, with auspicious data from clinical gene therapy studies anticipated over the next few months.

New scope for AAV and Lentivirus

AAV and lentivirus applications are predicted to offer new therapeutic solutions for a number of important fields, including heart failure, neurologic disease and ophthalmology.

“These latest findings underline the importance of virus vectors as gene carriers in medical sciences, a trend that strikes at the core of SIRION Biotech’s mission – to supply next level vector solutions to academic and industrial research, worldwide,” said SIRION’s founder and managing director, Dr. Christian Thirion.

Dr. Thirion will visitthe exhibition that accompanies the DG-GT meeting, where Sirion is a co-sponsor. The team will be able to share details of an array of innovative SIRION virus technologies with clinical relevance, ready to be licensed out or spun-off into internaldevelopments under new investors. First applications include new adenoviral serotypes for vaccination studies and advanced lentivirus design to target even the most difficult cell types.

Promising gene vectors

“Our technology has reached a new level of refinement. Being able to efficiently target otherwise unattainable cells gives our customers the advantage they need to address the vector design challenges for medical progress,” Dr. Thirion said.

SIRION’s patented BAC system not only enables fast and reliable production of standard Ad5 AV for research applications but is also flexible enough to help design and produce high titers of completely new serotypes on the fly. One such serotype, the patented Ad19a, is currently tested in animal models in two separate vaccination studies and anticipated to go into clinical development as early as 2017.

LentiTHERAPY™: breakthrough method

SIRION Biotech has also developed a method to introduce single-chain antibodies onto lentiviral surface proteins. This increases the susceptibility of cells that express corresponding antigens. A synergistic effect with patented transduction enhancers further increases the gene transfer efficiency.

The new method, named LentiTHERAPY™, has been demonstrated with B-cell derived cancer cells and is being further optimized to target T-cells as well. This makes LentiTHERAPY™ a future hot candidate for CAR-T-cell therapy developments.

About SIRION Biotech

SIRION BIOTECH is Europe’s leading commercial supplier of viral vectors used for genetic research, target validation, gene therapy and vaccination studies.

Since SIRION began doing business in 2007, SIRION’s mission has been to change the paradigm for viral vector supplies. It has the ability to customizeand supply all common viral vector types (adenovirus, lentivirus and AAV) available within a matter of weeks at the concentration titers and in the quantities required for preclinical in-vitroand animal testing.

The company also offers a full range of virus related services, ranging from particle production to virus driven cell modeling.

SIRION offerings include the transformational RNAiONE™ knockdown validation platform.

Over the years, SIRION has achieved a row of virus related, patented technologies that are ready to licenseout for clinical applications in gene therapy, vaccination or regenerative medicine.

About DG-GT e.V

The 21st Annual Meeting of the German Society for Gene Therapy (DG-GT e.V.) will be held February 26-28 at the Faculty Centre for Pharmacy of the University of Vienna.

The two and a half day meeting will discuss latest developments in gene and cell therapy, with particular focus on topics like cancer gene therapy including oncolytic viruses, molecular imaging and cutting-edge vector technologies.

Up to thirty abstracts from internationally renowned scientists will be selected for presentation on advanced clinical trials for the treatment of cancer and hereditary diseases.

There will also be a poster session featuring five-minute presentations. The half-day education session before the conference opens will present updates on current state of the art technologies in gene and cell vector design and production.

More information at: https://dg-gt2015.univie.ac.at/home/

Dr. Christian Thirion, Managing Director, SIRION Biotech
Tel. +49 89 700 961 99 9
Email: [email protected]

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