Xcellerex, Inc. received two Phase I contracts awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP) program. The total funding for the two Phase I contracts is more than $13 million. The AMP program is focused on technologies for producing emergency therapeutics and vaccines, rapidly and cost effectively in order to respond to a range of biological threats. Phase I of the AMP program is focused on optimizing host strains that will express a model vaccine and antibody, and demonstrating small-scale production. Subsequent phases will focus on rapid process optimization, scale up and cost-effective production.

Xcellerex will serve as the prime contractor on the first grant, in which the company is collaborating with Dowpharma, Biopharm Services, and DeltaDOT, Ltd. The team combines Xcellerex’s PDMax process development and FlexFactory manufacturing technologies with Dowpharma’s Pfenex Expression Technology, a Pseudomonas based expression system. DeltaDOT’s Peregrine and Osprey high throughput technology platforms provide critical analytical capabilities required to track product quality, and BioPharm Services will provide advanced modeling capabilities for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

Dr. Michael Callahan, program manager for DARPA’s AMP program, stated, “The AMP program will develop radically-enhanced high-throughput manufacturing technologies to direct novel protein expression platforms to produce vaccines and antibodies at unprecedented rates, in huge quantities and at extraordinary low cost per dose.”

Parrish Galliher, Xcellerex’s founder, president, and chief technology officer, said, “The DARPA grants recognize the potential of Xcellerex’s PDMax and FlexFactory systems to establish biomanufacturing capacity and produce vaccines and therapeutic proteins rapidly and cost-effectively. Current production methods can take many months to optimize for large-scale production, while a large-scale manufacturing process and facility could require years to prepare. While there have been significant efforts directed at the discovery of new vaccines and therapeutics, less attention has been focused on developing novel manufacturing technology.”

Xcellerex is collaborating with Neugenesis (prime contractor), SRI International and BioPharm Services on the second contract. The grant is based on the use of PDMax and FlexFactory to show the potential of Neugenesis’s NeuBIOS protein production platform. Neugenesis and SRI will provide project management and integration systems for the team.