- Navrogen developing therapies to target Humoral Immuno-Oncology (HIO) factors and reverse inhibitory activity against antibody-based therapies.
- Navrogen to use Lonza's GS Xceed® expression system for expression of novel protein and antibody-based configurations
- Includes GS PiggyBac™, a highly efficient gene integration technology ideally suited to support the expression of challenging proteins.
Dr. Nicholas Nicolaides, Ph.D., Navrogen's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.
“Our collaboration with Lonza and their expertise will undoubtedly enable us to advance our pipeline of first-in-class products forward to meet our strategic initiatives and timelines. This partnership is one of many that we have formed with top-tiered vendors who have proven track records in supporting the development of biological-based therapies to support clinical trials and commercialization.”
Dr Sarah Holland, Head of licensing, Lonza Pharma & Biotech
“Developing new technologies to enable production of increasingly complex and hard-to-express biological drugs is a priority for Lonza. Navrogen's use of our GS PiggyBac system aligns the economics of bringing these first-in-class therapeutics to patients with current market needs.”
Philadelphia, PA (USA) and Basel (CH), 20 November 2019 – Navrogen Inc. and Lonza Pharma & Biotech announced today that they have entered a licensing agreement for the production of Navrogen biotherapeutics using Lonza's GS Xceed Expression System.
Navrogen recently announced funding to develop biotherapeutics targeting Humoral Immuno-Oncology (HIO) factors to reverse their inhibitory activity against the pharmacologic effects of antibody-based therapies. Navrogen's biological drugs involve novel protein and antibody-based configurations. Lonza's GS Xceed toolbox includes GS PiggyBac, a unique and proven transposon-based technology suited for complex protein expression and bioprocessing that preferentially targets stable regions of the genome associated with highly expressed genes. This system will play a key role in advancing Navrogen's novel therapeutic interventions from the laboratory bench to patient's bedside.
“We are pursuing novel targets, called HIO factors, produced by tumor cells that dampen the effect of a number of antibody-based therapeutics. To overcome the immuno-suppressive effects of these factors we developed a pipeline of uniquely engineered, biological-based compositions that may require optimized systems to facilitate their production at large scale for clinical trials”, commented Dr. Luigi Grasso, Ph.D., co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Navrogen.