Contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) BioCina has expanded its collaboration with GPN Vaccines to develop a vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Known as Gamma-PN, the engineered whole-cell vaccine acts on the bacterium that causes infections such as pneumonia, bacteraemia and meningitis.

GPN's vaccine technology is an engineered Streptococcus pneumoniae strain without capsular polysaccharide.

BioCina will produce current good manufacturing practice batches for the vaccine programme on a large-scale basis at its facility in Adelaide, Australia.

The Adelaide site focuses on the development and production of recombinant proteins in microbial systems such as E coli.

GPN Vaccines chairman and CEO professor Tim Hirst stated: “We are delighted to be progressing with the next stage of cGMP manufacture of our innovative whole-cell pneumococcal vaccine, Gamma-PN, with BioCina as the CDMO of choice. 

“They successfully optimised the manufacture of Phase I material, and we now look forward to working with them to deliver a scaled-up process for the manufacture of Phase II material suitable for clinical evaluation worldwide.”

There are more than 100 serotypes of S pneumoniae and the currently marketed vaccine offers protection from only 20 of them.

Gamma-PN will be developed to offer protection to adults and children against all strains of S pneumoniae, irrespective of serotype status.

BioCina CEO Mark Womack stated: “We are extremely proud that GPN Vaccines has asked us to further scale up the production of Gamma-PN, which has the potential to protect so many lives against a broad range of serotypes not covered by any current vaccines.”