The Sunflower Therapeutics, a known public-oriented corporation transitioning global access to protein manufacturing potential for different applications, showed the receipt of its first milestone payment in the ongoing commercialization of a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in partnership with SK Bioscience, a leading innovative vaccine and biotech industry poised to promote human health, covering prevention and cure. This milestone payment reflects the successful completion and elaboration of a tech transfer opportunity for various HPV serotypes and marks a first in a series of partnerships to commercialize the 10-valent HPV vaccine candidate.
The SK Bioscience and sunflower’s partnership intends to identify HPV, a crucial global public health condition. Cervical cancer, which is caused by to specific wave of HPV, encompasses a prominent health threat to women with a massive burden on the African continent, publicly. In 2018, 19 of the top 20 major countries globally with the increased burden of cervical cancer were found in Africa. Globally, it is recorded that HPV immunization programs have reached 12% of young adolescent girls. This achievement is considered first in a whole series that led to scalability in manufacturing, commercialization, and clinical evaluation of an excellent 10-valent HPV vaccine.
With this partnership, SK and Sunflower focus on developing an efficient and easy manufacturing process for a 10-valent HPV vaccine with the help of alternative protein expression (P. pastoris). The sunflower’s robust strain engineering platform was integrated to optimize and create P. pastoris strains describing each of the 10 serotypes. The profit highlights the successful tech transfer of these strains effectively to SK Bioscience.
Vice president and head of business development 1 office at SK Bioscience, Hyun-jun Youn said, “Our thoughtful investment in and partnership with Sunflower Therapeutics shows our commitment to strengthening partnerships for global health. We together focus on establishing the cost-effective and safe solutions that can expand access largely to areas where they are most needed.”
Founder, CEO, and president of Sunflower Therapeutics, Dr. Kerry R. Love said, “By completing this tech transfer milestone, we’ve presented our designed yeast host and biomanufacturing approaches' potency that can contribute best to the real-world vaccine production. Along with SK Bioscience, we are making valuable progress in the affordable HPV vaccine that can expand access, covering the most needed individuals and regions as well.”
Holding MSC in Biotechnology, Sushma Singh is a seasoned editor at Towards Healthcare, with over three years of experience delivering insightful and accurate news in the healthcare, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical domains.
