Pittsboro-based Biolex Therapeutics has expanded its longstanding business relationship with Georgia animal health products company Merial to use Biolex's unique duckweed system for developing animal vaccines.
The agreement is aimed at streamlining the vaccine production process by using Biolex's patented LEX System, which uses a genetically engineered form of lemna, the common aquatic plant known as duckweed, to create the proteins needed for vaccines.
The companies didn't disclose the financial terms of the expanded pact.
"The broad expansion of the Merial collaboration is a clear demonstration of the potential of our LEX System to produce safer and more efficacious vaccines in a more cost- and capital-efficient manner," said Jan Turek, Biolex president and CEO.
Biolex was founded on technology developed by Anne-Marie Stomp, Ph.D., with help from a $100,000 loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Stomp was recruited to North Carolina State University in 1986 on an Oliver Smithies Faculty Recruitment Grant from the Biotechnology Center, because of her expertise in forestry research. But she later took an interest in duckweed, which grows significantly faster than trees.
Stomp's research created the protein-production technology that was ultimately licensed to Biolex. Biolex has subsequently brought in well more than $100 million in further venture and partnership funding.