About OVO
OVO Biomanufacturing are the world leading experts in providing technical solutions to solve the effects of defective interfering particles for viral vaccine manufacturers.
OVO's novel technology platform offers multi-fold yield improvements by reducing the generation and effect of these particles during all stages of vaccine manufacture. OVO's platform can be used to manage defective interfering particles for both established and developing live attenuated and inactivated viral vaccines. Our platform can be implemented without significantly altering production processes or regulatory compliance.
Defective interfering particles
What are defective interfering particles (DIPs)?
Defective interfering particles (DIPs) are naturally occurring viral like particles that have truncated/shortened genomes. These particles, when co-infected in a cell with a virus, highjack the viral replicative machinery and out replicate the infectious virus. This leads to the cell producing more DIPs than infectious virus. When looking at the total cellular population, the overall levels of virus produced proportionally decrease with the increase in concentration of DIPs.
Importantly:
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DIPs spontaneously generate and replicate anytime a virus replicates.
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DIPs are produced as a by-product by all viruses.
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Due to similarities in the physical characteristics of DIPs and infectious viruses, it is not possible to physically separate these DIPs from virus.
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Only management of the effects and generation of DIPs can offer an effective solution to reduce the impact and concentration of this contaminant.
How do DIPs impact viral vaccine manufacture?
Both live attenuated and inactivated viral vaccine manufacture rely on growing virus to produce the key immunogenic components used in their vaccines. This requires growing up virus on an enormous scale. As DIPs are generated and replicate during viral growth, failure to effectively manage this undesirable by-product can lead to a significant reduction in the final yield on the immunogenic component used for the vaccine. This is due to the DIPs increasing in concentration during growth of the virus, resulting in an overall reduction in the total levels of viral particles.
Improper management of DIPs in viral vaccines can lead to 10-fold or higher reductions in yield. This can have significant impacts on the cost of goods and production lead times.
OVO have identified the presence DIPs in a number of human and animal vaccines. The levels present in these vaccines suggests that the viral yield is being substantially reduced for these manufatcurers.
Technology
OVO's software platform
OVO's software-based platform offers a pain free solution for manufacturers to manage and reduce DIPs throughout the entire manufacturing process. Our platform is designed to be used by the manufacturer independently on site anytime the virus is grown, from generating seed stocks through to producing the final vaccine. This ensures the DIP concentration is at minimal levels throughout the production process, maximising viral particle yield.
How it works?
During the manufacturing process, virus is grown over multiple stages for optimisation and upscale before being used for vaccine batch manufacture. During these series of stages, the output virus produced at each stage is used as the subsequent input stock at the next stage in the series. Each stage must have the levels of DIPs controlled in order to maximise final manufacturing efficiency and yield.
Our cloud-based platform allows the manufacturer to independently use any type of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data to provide information on DIP content and indicate the required growth conditions to reduce and maintain low levels of DIPs within the parameters of their production process at each stage of production. This provides a tailor-made route to achieve low levels of DIPs at each stage of manufacture to ensure optimal manufacturing efficiency.
Flexibility is key
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Use of the platform does not impact regulatory compliance or change the manufacturing process.
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The platform can be adapted to accommodate any process improvements or optimisation steps.
Current vaccine platforms in development
Influenza
Our technology can be applied to both inactivated and live attenuated vaccines. This covers over 95% of the $5 billion flu vaccine market.
SARS-CoV-2
With the current COVID-19 crisis it is essential that vaccine manufacturers are able to maximise manufacturing yield. Our platform can be applied to live attenuated, inactivated and some live viral vector vaccines.
Team
Co-founder of OVO.
Over 8 years experience in the virology and DIPs fields.
Co-founder of OVO.
Associate Professor at Coventry University with 20 years experience in the virology and DIPs fields.
30 years commercial pharma industry veteran with 10 years vaccine experience.
Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.
Ex-head of Global Research at Sanofi Pasteur.
Emeritus professors at the University of Warwick.
Pioneers in the DIP, field with over 80 years of experience combined.