Irvine, CA - Rubicon Biotechnology LLC is pleased to announce the selection of Celltheon Expression Technologies for cell line, process, and analytical development services in support of Rubicon’s Fv-Hsp72 program. The program includes the expression and screening of several variants, with the winning variants proceeding to further cell line development utilizing Celltheon’s SMARTTM Platform. The goal is to create high titer cells lines that will first be used to make study material for Rubicon’s collaborators at several leading research institutions in the US. One final candidate will be selected to make a clone and Research Cell Bank, which will be the basis for the subsequent Maser Cell Bank for GMP production.
“Rubicon is excited about his opportunity to obtain the SMARTTM expression system for our Fv-Hsp72 protein. This system, already adapted to defined growth media, will enable Rubicon to develop a scalable process that will use industry standard single use bioreactors and chromatography columns to produce our research and GMP grade material in large quantities. Our objective is to have a common manufacturing process to make Fv-Hsp72 for all our indications”, commented Mr. Richard Richieri, Rubicon’s Founding Partner and President.
Amita Goel, Celltheon’s CEO and Founder expressed that, “Celltheon is eager to collaborate with Rubicon on its novel Fv-Hsp72 therapeutic protein, which shows great promise for several life-threatening occurrences such as myocardial infarction and traumatic brain injury. We are eager to leverage improvements in our SMARTTM platform to support production for Rubicon’s animal studies and GMP production. The combination of Celltheon’s SUPERCELLsTM and pCTTM vectors which contain our novel CT StabilizerTM Element, shows great potential in improving the expression of the Fv-Hsp72 to develop a high-producing and highly-scalable clone for this program.”
About Rubicon Biotechnology
Rubicon Biotechnology is a privately held biotechnology company that develops targeted, life-saving technologies in the areas of cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology and oncology. Rubicon has in-licensed two platform technologies for drug development. The first is Fv-Hsp72 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which delivers heat shock protein 72, a key protein which saves injured cells that suffer hypoxic and oxidative stresses that occur following common tissue injuries, such as heart attack, stroke and traumatic brain injury. The second technology, Modified Annexin A5, licensed from MosaMedix B.V., delivers tumor-targeted immunostimulants to enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. Rubicon is developing these platform therapies with the goal of improving health outcomes and saving lives.
About Celltheon Corporation
Celltheon Corporation is a privately held biotechnology company, focused on developing novel mammalian expression technologies that address key industry pain points in bioprocessing and bioproduction. Celltheon’s unique Celltheon SMARTTM Technology platform is a mammalian expression system optimized to express traditionally “difficult to express proteins”. The platform is comprised of the Celltheon SUPERCELLSTM which are a modified CHOK-1 derived cell line, the pCTTM vectors and the Celltheon SMARTTM Bioprocessing platform; the combined effect of the platform results in high expression of recombinant proteins (5-10g/L titer) and reduced timelines (16 weeks from cDNA to RCB). The Celltheon SUPERCELLSTM have been modified to optimize key protein folding pathways and produce low levels of lactate and ammonia, which directly affects product quality (i.e: aggregation, glycosylation, etc.). The pCTTM vectors contain the novel CT StabilizerTM, a DNA Element which increases cell line stability and productivity by stabilizing and increasing transcription of the gene of interest. Finally, the Celltheon SMARTTM Bioprocessing platform uses commercially available media and feeds as well as consistent scalable bioreactor process parameters, to quickly and reproducibly scale-up Celltheon’s clones in stir-tank production bioreactors. The platform has been leveraged to produced >80 recombinant therapeutic proteins and has aided in salvaging the development of several therapeutic programs that were “difficult to express” by nature.