Monday, October 31, 2011

iBio, Inc. (IBIO) Receives U.S. Patent for iBioLaunch Platform that Causes Non-transgenic Plants to Rapidly Produce Proteins

iBio, Inc., a leader in the plant-made pharmaceutical field, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent that covers the viral vectors comprising the iBioLaunch™ platform. iBio owns this proprietary technology that was developed by scientists at iBio’s research collaborator, the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (Fraunhofer).

The iBioLaunch™ platform is a highly flexible technology that easily, cheaply and reliably causes non-tangenic plants to rapidly produce a large amount of recombinant protein in the plant biomass for biotherapeutics and vaccines. This whole plant approach allows for lower operating and capital expenses versus protein production using engineered microbial or animal cells in bioreactors. It also has both commercial and public safety advantages, as well as scalability, no risk of contamination by animal pathogens and the ability to show complex proteins.

“The issuance of this patent substantially strengthens the intellectual property foundation of the iBioLaunch system for simultaneously expressing more than a single protein,” said Terence Ryan, Ph.D., iBio’s Senior Vice-President in a press release on Monday. “For example, this patent protects the technology we use for production of human monoclonal antibodies, a rapidly growing pharmaceutical category in which we recently announced successful product candidate testing.”

iBio continues to establish licenses or other collaboration arrangements for its biosimilar products and proprietary products as it moves to commercialize its technology. In January, iBio and Fraunhofer entered into a license and collaboration agreement with an entity linked to the Health Ministry of Brazil to develop and sell a proprietary yellow fever vaccine created with iBioLaunch technology to replace chicken egg based vaccine products.

For more information, please visit www.ibioinc.com


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