ALS Therapy Development Institute Signs Manufacturing Agreement with Microbix
Microbix Biosystems Inc. announced that it has been selected by the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) in the U.S. to manufacture a series of adenoviruses that will be used in research aimed at fighting the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often called Lou Gehrig's disease.
The ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), based in Cambridge, Mass., is a research organization that works to discover and develop drugs that are potential treatments for ALS and related disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. "The production of high titer adenoviral constructs required for animal testing requires specialized manufacturing expertise that only recognized leaders in the field like Microbix can deliver," says Steve Perrin, Chief Scientific Officer at the ALS TDI. "Patients and families should be excited about this collaboration for a couple of reasons. High quality, high volume manufacturing of gene therapies will allow us to switch genes on and off at an unprecedented pace. We're scaling this project to get to the answer no matter how many genes we've got to modulate. It might be gene 1 or gene 300 that controls the disease so we need to keep marching until we find it," said Sean Scott, president of ALS TDI."
Under the terms of the one-year contract, Microbix will use its proprietary technology to produce, purify and characterize various adenoviruses created to carry therapies to sites of ALS pathology. The preparations will then be returned to the Institute, allowing them to further their research into this debilitating disease. Adenoviruses are non-pathogenic viruses that can deliver specifically selected genes to key sites in the body or to cultured cells for therapeutic purposes.
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