The alliance sees the UK headquartered Aptamer Group entering into an agreement with Sweden’s Bio-Works Technologies to co-develop a new affinity resin for improved purification and scale up of gene therapy vectors.
Under the agreement, Aptamer will develop an Optimer ligand that is capable of binding and of eluting a viral vector. Bio-Works will then develop a derivatized resin by coupling the Optimer to its patented WorkBeads agarose beads.
Nucleic acid-based affinity ligands, the Optimer binders are isolated entirely in vitro. “There are no animals involved in their development and so have no such reliance on the immune system,” explained David Bunka, CTO, Aptamer Group.
That characteristic makes Optimers well suited to a range of applications, and against all sorts of targets, not just viral vectors, he told BioPharma-Reporter.
“The ability to control the ‘elution conditions’ for an Optimer is a significant advantage in any purification process, but is of most interest when the target, viral vectors, for instance, is easily damaged or denatured by the elution conditions that would be needed for antibody release. In those cases, a mild elution condition used by Optimer binders is highly advantageous.”
Controlling the development process
The company claims the Optimer platform provides significant improvements in downstream purification of viral vectors.
“Some viral vectors are quite fragile. They can be damaged or destroyed if they are not treated carefully at every stage of the manufacturing process. Protein purification using affinity ligands such as antibodies may reliably separate the viral vector from the other proteins in the production feedstock, but these antibodies often do not release the vector without the use of harsh, often denaturing elution conditions. This results in a significant reduction in yield or a complete failure to purify a viable product.