iBio, Inc. announced it received a U.S. patent that could be used in producing a vaccine for the flu, plague and other health threats.
iBio, which is based in Newark, has helped to develop a plant-based vaccine production system that uses robots and other technology.
“The achievements with plague vaccine are just one application of iBio’s core technology — the iBioLaunch gene expression platform — that enables advantageous plant-based development and manufacture of monoclonal antibodies and other therapeutics, as well as vaccines,” said Robert Erwin, iBio’s president. “In its application to seasonal influenza vaccines, the speed of our proprietary technology would allow determination of the identity of each season’s predominant influenza virus to be made substantially closer in time to the flu season, decreasing the opportunities for viral mutation and thereby increasing the likely efficacy of that year’s vaccine and decreasing flu-caused illnesses and deaths.”
iBio noted that a ccording to information published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, this season’s influenza vaccine offers relatively poor protection in comparison to prior years as different strains emerged.
With traditional vaccine manufacturing technologies, such as chicken eggs and cultured cells, there is a very long lead time required prior to the beginning of each new flu season for large scale manufacturing, iBio noted.
iBio vaccine technology holds the potential to significantly reduce the lead time required to manufacture influenza vaccines, thereby enabling selection of the virus strains for vaccine development closer to the time the vaccine product is actually needed, the company stated in a release.
iBio saw a run-up in its stock price last year on prospects that the technology could be use in the fight against Ebola. Those prospects fizzled and the stock price plummeted from $3.21 a share stock price in October. In trading earlier this week, shares of I-Bio were trading at 60 cents.
