EPIcyte Awarded Plantibodies Grants - Company Business and Marketing

Applied Genetics News, April, 1999

EPIcyte Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (San Diego) has been awarded two phase I SBIR awards from the NIH and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) research grant from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. All three grants revolve around the company's use of plants to produce high levels of mammalian proteins.

The two SBIR grants are valued at $100,000 apiece. One grant is entitled "Mucosal Plantibodies: A Human Anti-HSV SIgA" and the other "Mucosal Plantibodies: A Human Anti-Sperm SIgA." The grants will permit EPIcyte and its partner ReProtect LLC to further the development of an anti-herpes antibody to prevent the transmission of herpes virus by sexual contact and an anti-sperm antibody to prevent contraception. The antibodies are produced using EPIcyte's proprietary plantibodies technology, which allows the production of antibodies and other protein molecules in plants. According to the company, production costs are 25 to 100 times less expensive than would be the case if animal cell culture systems were used. The DARPA research grant is worth $2.8 million for a proposal entitled "High Level Expression of Vaccine Antigens and Epithelial Transport Molecules in Transgenic Plant Cells and Organs." The program is a joint effort between EPIcyte and the Boyce Thompson Institute with the aim of developing delivery technology and protective molecules to address biological warfare agents. "The SBIR funding will enable us to leverage our plantibodies technology for manufacturing antibodies in plants," says Robert Leach, CEO of EPIcyte. "And the DARPA grant will allow us to utilize our proprietary transport molecules for delivering drugs specifically to the body's epithelial tissues." EPIcyte's epithelial transport technology uses the company's antibody-based transport molecules to target drugs specifically to epithelial tissues. Both the plantibodies production system and the transport molecules technology were developed by Mich Hein and Andrew Hiatt, the founders of EPIcyte.