Dutch biotechnology company Amarna Therapeutics B.V. and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO today announced that they have entered into a collaboration agreement to further develop Amarna’s viral gene delivery platform SVac.
Under this agreement, TNO will develop novel methods for the manufacture, formulation and testing of viral gene delivery systems such as the SVac platform of Amarna. The collaboration is partly supported by a co-financing initiative aimed at developing innovative technologies.
“We are very pleased to work with TNO”, said Ben van Leent, CEO of Amarna Therapeutics. “We have developed a revolutionary novel viral gene delivery vector platform technology SVac for producing human therapeutics that have the potential to save lives and improve the quality of life for millions of people worldwide that are suffering from life-threatening or severe chronic diseases. The technology is now available to address the major diseases of our time including genetic disorders, autoimmune diseases, allergies and cancer. Amarna Therapeutics acts at the forefront of the therapeutic vaccination and gene therapy markets. Both markets are rapidly growing to reach an estimated 40 billion Euro’s in 2015. I’m convinced that the therapeutics in our pipeline all have blockbuster potential. The partnership with TNO enables us to initiate the first time in man clinical trials with one of our lead therapeutics in 2010.”
“The partnership between TNO and Amarna allows us to expand our pre-clinical development services into the extremely important therapeutic area of viral vector and gene delivery technologies and is yet another important step in our establishment of a fully integrated and highly innovative package of biopharmaceutical development capabilities” says Menzo Havenga, managing director of Biosciences at TNO.
About TNO
TNO is a prominent, independent knowledge company whose expertise and research contribute significantly to the competitiveness of businesses and organizations, to the economy and to the quality of life as a whole. Its versatility and capacity to integrate a broad diversity of sciences and technologies makes TNO unique. TNO employs about 4300 professionals in five core areas: TNO Quality of Life, TNO Defense, Security and Safety, TNO Science and Industry, TNO Built Environment and Geosciences, TNO Information and Communication Technology.
Within biopharmaceutical development, TNO’s mission is to optimize and accelerate the transition of human therapeutics from discovery to the clinic. TNO strives towards this goal by establishing innovative product development and manufacturing technologies and applying them in a fully integrated package of pre-clinical development services.