Dyadic and Frederick National Laboratory to develop cell lines for coronavirus vaccine candidates

Dyadic International Inc (NASDAQ:DYAI) revealed Wednesday that it has been selected by the Frederick National Laboratory to engineer its patented and proprietary C1 cell lines to produce a number of coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine candidates.

The Jupiter, Florida-based biotechnology company, said the vaccine candidates will be utilized by the Vaccine Research Center which is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), at the National Institutes of Health.

“We are proud that our C1 technology has the potential to support the Vaccine Research Center COVID-19 vaccine development program by engineering innovative high yield C1 fungal cell lines to rapidly produce candidate vaccines with increased immunogenicity and attractive manufacturing properties,” Dyadic CEO Mark Emalfarb said in a statement.

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“In addition, we are grateful to be able to also work together with the US, EU, Israel, and are in discussions with governmental agencies, biotech/biopharma companies, and funding organizations to apply our industrially proven hyper-productive C1 gene expression platform by helping to address the immediate coronavirus outbreak and be better prepared for future infectious diseases, pandemic, and epidemic outbreaks,” he added.

The Dyadic boss said the company hoped to turn “this unfortunate situation” into an opportunity “to advance biopharmaceutical manufacturing” to help “speed development, lower the cost and improve the performance” of biologic vaccines and drugs such as “insulin, seasonal flu and other vaccines and antibodies” to make healthcare more affordable.

The federally-funded Frederick National Laboratory aims to improve human health by advancing biomedical sciences, focusing on cancer, AIDS, and emerging infectious diseases.

Founded in 1979, Dyadic engages in the large-scale manufacture of low-cost enzymes and other proteins for markets in the United States and Europe. It leverages its proprietary C1 gene expression system – a fungal expression technology for producing enzymes – to help bring biologic vaccines, therapeutic enzymes, proteins, biosimilars and drugs to market faster and at a lower cost.

Dyadic has patented its proprietary filamentous fungus, Myceliophthora thermophila, nicknamed C1 and the associated molecular tools used to engineer the C1 cells to express and manufacture large volumes of low-cost biologic products such as enzymes and proteins. The C1 fungus is a living cell that has been bioengineered by Dyadic scientists for more than two decades.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at [email protected]

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