SBIR Phase II:Non-Chromatographic Method for the Purification of Viral Vectors

The broader impact /commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the creation of a scalable platform technology to deliver new therapies and vaccines through manufacturing viral vectors. This sector has been hampered by inefficient manufacturing methods designed for small molecules 10,000 times less complex than the current effort. The technology developed herein will provide a durable competitive advantage by offering “plug and play,” broad compatibility, and improved productivity for virus manufacturing compared to existing industry solutions. The technology will improve yields, shorten manufacturing lead times, and accelerate time-to-market for potentially life-saving therapies and vaccines. This research project seeks to validate scalability and establish a production method to deliver quality reagents to developers of adenoviral vectors.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to advance a scalable downstream purification process for gene therapy vectors.Viral vectors have remarkable utility as therapeutics and vaccines, but their impact has been plagued by downstream purification inefficiencies that lead to single digit yields.The technology developed in this project will address this bottleneck using a polypeptide-based reagent that combines affinity-capture with phase separation and filtration equipment. The technology aims to improve capacity, step yield, final vector purity, and productivity. To validate the lead adenovirus reagent, a tangential flow filtration process will be optimized using harvests with a wide range of starting impurities and across various adenovirus serotypes to ensure a broadly compatible product. The reagent’s ability to stabilize adenovirus will be further explored toward an efficient and scalable filtration process. Finally, a method for reagent manufacturing will be developed to ensure consistent and low-cost supply. Completion of these objectives will yield a mature downstream process for one-step adenovirus purification, a manufacturing method that ensures sufficient quantity of quality reagents to support adenovirus clinical development, and rapidly deployable adenovirus vaccine manufacturing to meet future needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.