GigaGen Granted Expansion of Contract with US Department of Defense to Develop Synthetic Human Antibody Treatments for Botulinum Neurotoxins

South San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  GigaGen Inc., a biotechnology company advancing transformative antibody drugs for immune deficiencies, infectious diseases and checkpoint resistant cancers, and a subsidiary of Grifols, announced today the company has been granted an expansion of its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND) to develop synthetic human antibody treatments for botulinum neurotoxins.

The modification, awarded through Army Contracting Command, will expand the value of the agreement to $11.8M. The expanded contract will leverage GigaGen’s novel platform capabilities to rapidly create synthetic human antibodies to protect the warfighter against botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT) A and B and will support advanced development activities including manufacturing and IND-enabling studies to demonstrate improved potency and military utility.

“We are very happy to have received this expansion of our initial contract, which affirms DOD’s confidence in our technology and approach and its commitment to support the development of the BoNT hyperimmune product through clinical development,” said Carter Keller, a senior vice president at Grifols and head of GigaGen. “We are proud of this partnership which will further support the development of our pipeline and platform capabilities and will contribute to the development of key therapeutics against high-priority pathogens.”

GigaGen’s next-generation hyperimmune platform offers a novel way to develop recombinant (synthetic) polyclonal antibody therapeutics in the laboratory which are potentially more powerful than what a natural immune response can provide. Using high-throughput, single-cell genomic and protein engineering technology GigaGen will create cell lines that express recombinant human antibodies against BoNT A and B. The polyclonal cell bank can then be used to continuously manufacture the BoNT A & B hyperimmune product at existing manufacturing facilities.  

This effort will demonstrate an accelerated, target-specific therapeutic manufacturing platform’s ability to rapidly create and express polyclonal antibody cell banks against BoNT A and B. It will also confirm if rapid manufacturing timelines will support the JPEO-CBRND’s preparedness goals and ability to deliver timely capabilities against a known or emerging threat.