Medicago has produced the H1 VLP antigen in 14 days by using a technology invented by John Innes Centre researchers, licensed by PBL to Medicago.
The CPMV-HT (cowpea mosaic virus-hypertranslatable) expression system was developed by Prof George Lomonossoff and Dr Frank Sainsbury at the John Innes Centre, using specific elements of comoviruses.
It achieves high levels of heterologous protein expression within a few days without the need for virus replication.
It also has the benefit of not producing infectious viral particles and therefore achieves complete bio-containment while speeding up the whole process of protein production.
A patent application with inventors from the John Innes Centre has been filed by PBL, the technology transfer company of the John Innes Centre.
The CPMV-HT technology represents a step-change in efficiency of manufacturing proteins in plants, and so is ideal for applications such as vaccine production as demonstrated by Medicago's production of the new vaccine candidate for the influenza A (H1N1) virus, also known as swine flu.
The John Innes Centre is an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
