Avecia's €1 million investment to meet demand

Demand for the new cost and time-reducing technology, unveiled by Avecia Biologics in May this year, has seen the company invest more than €1 million. The technology, pAVEway, enables class-leading (>10g/L) microbial production of a wide range of therapeutically useful proteins, including vaccines, growth factors and cytokines. Using conventional methods, it is normally very difficult to achieve high levels of protein during fermentation. The choice of expression system, host strain and fermentation conditions has a profound effect on the overall quantity and quality of protein produced, and, therefore, has a major impact on the success of the scale-up from research to manufacturing. pAVeway incorporates state-of-the-art microbial systems to optimize the fermentation processes and now Avecia has spent an excess of €1 million to offer an expanded range of analytical testing studies. This includes essential work understanding biological stability and the company will also recruit additional staff as part of the R&D expansion.

Dr Mark Carver, chief scientific officer at Avecia Biologics, said: "The investment in expanding our research and development capabilities is in direct response to an increase in the number of business opportunities which are arising and the interest we are seeing in the pAVEway technology."

www.avecia.com