Vaccine Manufacturing Facility Opened By John Swinney MSP, Scotland

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 22 May 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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John Swinney MSP, Finance Secretary officially opened a new vaccine manufacturing facility at Big DNA, Roslin Biocentre, by Edinburgh on 12 May 2009. This major facility takes a completely new method of making vaccines to its next level, to test a variety of methods that will be used in future to manufacture important new vaccines, which have the potential to save millions of lives during major outbreaks of disease worldwide.

Conventional vaccines can be difficult and expensive to make, requiring specialist facilities and expertise, and sometimes fail to work for some diseases. The unique process developed by Dr John March and his team at Big DNA Ltd uses self assembling nano-particles (bacterial viruses) called "bacteriophage" to deliver vaccines. These are grown cheaply and simply on special bacterial hosts cells and contain the genetic instructions (or DNA) rather than using the disease organism itself, which all conventional vaccines rely upon.

This new way to develop a vaccine is faster, cheaper and can be more effective, bringing great benefits to public health. Dr March, founder of Big DNA Ltd says: "We are proud to be a Scottish-based life sciences company which has taken an exciting early stage technology and have actually developed it to the level where we aim to be entering clinical trials within the next couple of years."

John Swinney MSP, Finance Secretary said: "This is excellent news for Scotland's life sciences sector in a challenging economic climate. Life science is an industry which can boost investment in Scotland, and with Scottish expertise, develop revolutionary technologies. Successful companies such as Big DNA can enhance Scotland's place on the global stage for life sciences and help position Scotland's economy for a stronger recovery."

Bacteriophage DNA vaccines offer the potential for extremely rapid development and manufacture, using relatively simple processes (weeks rather than months), important for pandemic influenza. In addition they offer the potential to be taken orally, eliminating the need for needles and injections and all their associated hazards. A range of vaccines are currently under development.

Big DNA Ltd raised £1.5million of private investment last year to fund the development of its unique patented technology - developing manufacturing processes for vaccines, and to go through the regulatory approvals process to develop the vaccines for clinical trials. "We continue to develop collaborative research ventures with academic and commercial bodies, a process which helps us all get the results we are after much more quickly,"

continues Dr March. For example, Big DNA has an important collaboration with colleagues in Beijing at the China Agricultural University to produce vaccines against chlamydia in pigs. Lord Freeman, formerly Minister of State for Public Transport and Defence Procurement Minister, is chairman of Big DNA.

Source
Nexxus, Scotland

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