Pegasus Biotech Announces Filing of Provisional Patent Application for BPE Plasmid Technology
[Charlottetown, PE, Canada]: Pegasus Biotech has announced the filing of a provisional patent application for their new BPE plasmid technology. This novel technology is a high-yielding, ultra-low-cost, selection marker free plasmid that has the potential to significantly reduce plasmid manufacturing COGS. The technology has been demonstrated to have greater than 1.25 g/L plasmid fermentation yields with plasmid copy numbers in excess of 1000 copies/cell.
“The BPE plasmid was developed in response to client needs… they needed higher yields and lower costs than any existing plasmid technology could offer them… we have a commitment to our clients to get their products to market, and expanding our service offerings to include enabling technology that solves their challenges is one more way we can fulfill that mission” said Dr. Yimy Mena, CEO of Pegasus Biotech. The company works with clients across the globe and DNA vaccine development is a major part of their business. The R&D program to develop the BPE started in 2020 to meet the requirements to drive down costs and increase yields, especially related to DNA vaccines for animal health applications.
The BPE plasmid technology utilizes a patented origin that can be kept dormant during the fermentation stage and triggered at high cell densities to drive replication to levels significantly higher than what is produced by existing technology. It utilizes no antibiotic resistance selection marker and contains minimal bacterial sequences (<1,000 bp). The technology has the added benefit of having enhanced expression, with cells transfected with BPE plasmid having up to 7X the expression of conventional plasmid backbones. “We redesigned how plasmid DNA replicates, allowing us to control how and when our DNA is produced” said Dr. Patrick Slaine, principal scientist and inventor of the technology.
“This technology is transformational for applications where COGS and/or patient safety are factors… low cost, minimal bacterial sequences, high expression, and no antibiotic resistance selection marker were the requirements for the project, and this technology has all those characteristics… we now are looking forward to getting the technology into the marketplace and seeing new BPE based vaccines and gene-therapy products developed” said Daniel Wilson, COO of Pegasus Biotech.
The mission of Pegasus Biotech is to enable their clients to bring cutting edge innovation to the global human and Animal health markets. Their area of expertise is ensuring that client biopharmaceutical and vaccine development projects result in commercially viable products that are compliant with global regulations. Services include seed-to-formulation process development along with associated analytical development.
About Pegasus Biotech Inc: Pegasus Biotech Inc. is a full-service biotechnology contract research organization. They offer both process and analytical development services to the global pharma industry. They specialize in vaccine and biopharmaceutical development and are global leaders in DNA vaccine development.