Revivicor Inc. receives $1.8 Million Grant from ATP (NIST) for Human Polyclonal Antibody Production in Pigs for Use in the Treatment of Infectious Disease
Revivicor Inc., a
regenerative medicine company, and World-leader in the development of products
from cloned pigs for biomedical applications, is pleased to announce that it
has received a $1.8 million grant from the from the National Institute of
Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The project supported by this grant is
focused on utilization of Revivicor’s platform
technologies in gene knockout and somatic cell nuclear transfer to inactivate
the antibody producing genes (otherwise known as immunoglobulin genes) in pigs,
and replacing them with the human equivalents, such that the pig serves as a
bioreactor to make fully-human, broad-spectrum, polyclonal antibodies in large
volumes in its blood.
This technology has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of infectious disease in humans, to an even greater extent than the advent of antibiotics, since the antibodies can be made against not only bacteria, but also against viruses, antibiotic resistant agents, fungal infections, and toxins. In addition, intravenous immunoglobulin (IvIg) products will be produced for treatment of autoimmune disease (MS, arthritis), for cancer applications, and for immunosuppressed transplant patients. The project was initiated with support from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for development of treatments against biowarfare agents such as anthrax. The military applications will continue to be a priority for the Company. David Ayares, Revivicor’s CEO stated, “Receiving this grant from ATP is an important validation of the vast commercial potential of this technology, and critical to our goals of producing next-generation antibody-based therapeutics.”
Revivicor (formerly PPL Therapeutics Inc.) is best known for its lead products in xenotransplantation; namely the development of compatible organs, cells, and tissues from pigs for transplantation into humans. The Company was the first group to clone pigs in 2000, and the first to clone knockout pigs that lacked both copies of a gene (alpha 1,3 gal transferase) responsible for hyperacute rejection. Revivicor has an ongoing collaboration with Dr. David Cooper and other scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the Thomas E. Starzl Transplant Institute on pre-clinical development of whole organ (heart and kidney) therapeutics, and has an active collaboration, funded in part by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), with Dr. Massimo Trucco, at the Childrens’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, on the development of cellular therapeutics from its genetically modified pigs for treatment of Type I diabetes.
Revivicor
has offices in
For more information, contact:
David
Ayares, PhD
Revivicor
Inc.
(540)
961-5559
Notes to
editors:
Revivicor
was formed in April 2003, as spinout of the
The Advanced
Technology Program, managed by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, provides cost-shared funding to industry for high-risk R&D
projects with the potential to spark important, broad-based economic benefits
for the
visit the ATP web site, www.atp.nist.gov.
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