Baxter Healthcare Corporation and GlycoFi, Inc., announced a research collaboration under which Baxter will evaluate the potential of using GlycoFi's fungal expression platform for the production of human therapeutic proteins.

"The production of many human therapeutic proteins involves complex processes and major capital investments that may limit the ability of the biotech industry to meet future demands for the production of biopharmaceuticals in the pipeline," said Norbert Riedel, chief scientific officer at Baxter. "The advances in manufacturing that GlycoFi's platform presents could lead to a much more efficient production process for human therapeutic proteins, offering benefits across many therapeutic categories."

Currently, many therapeutic proteins require the use of mammalian cell lines in their production process. This process is not only time consuming, it also takes a significant investment in manufacturing capacity. As part of this two-year agreement, Baxter and GlycoFi will collaborate on the development of human therapeutic proteins using GlycoFi's innovative manufacturing platform, which utilizes yeast and filamentous fungi. This novel production platform promises to offer a significantly more efficient manufacturing method. Although fungal expression systems are able to produce human therapeutic proteins, they are currently unable to replicate the complex sugar structures that line the outside of many therapeutic proteins (called glycosylation structures). GlycoFi's innovative technology offers an approach to overcome this limitation. Under the terms of the agreement, Baxter will provide up-front and milestone payments to GlycoFi. Specific financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"A significant production bottleneck exists in the biotech industry, resulting from the number of therapeutic proteins in development and the currently limited capacity that exists for manufacturing these proteins for clinical trials and ultimately, commercialization," said Charles Hutchinson, chief executive officer at GlycoFi. "We've focused on overcoming the challenges associated with using fungi in place of mammalian cells to explore innovative production capabilities that could help address this bottleneck. We welcome the opportunity to work with a company with as much manufacturing expertise as Baxter and we look forward to further exploring the true potential of this unique approach."