Selexis, IAVI Expand HIV Vaccine Collaboration

Selexis SA, a life sciences company providing mammalian cell line generation, has expanded its collaboration with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) with two additional service agreements. Selexis will develop high-performance research cell banks to manufacture multiple HIV envelope proteins engineered by scientists at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center (NAC) at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and other parts of TSRI to help induce the generation of neutralizing antibodies against HIV through vaccination. Financial terms were not disclosed.
 
Previously, Selexis worked with IAVI on another engineered HIV envelope protein, also being developed by IAVI’s NAC at TSRI and other parts of TSRI, to increase cell line productivity using the Selexis CHO-Mplus Libraries. This effort resulted in an improvement of more than 3,000 percent in expression titers over conventional approaches, according to the company.
 
“Selexis and IAVI continue to build upon the success of the initial collaboration to further advance HIV vaccine research and development,” said Yemi Onakunle, Ph.D., vice president, licensing and business development, Selexis SA. “HIV envelope proteins are difficult to express and manufacture with consistent high quality and in high quantities. However, our SUREtechnology™ platform addresses this issue. It is incredibly rewarding to have the opportunity to leverage our production cell lines in the development of vaccines against HIV, a viral disease of such high unmet need.”
 
“Manufacturing of engineered HIV proteins in consistent quantity and quality is critical for further development of promising vaccine candidates toward early clinical testing,” said Labeeb Abboud, senior vice president, business development at IAVI. “We are pleased to extend our collaboration with Selexis to expedite the development of broadly effective vaccines that will be needed to help end the AIDS epidemic.”