Grambac-based VTU Technology, and Biomay, based in Vienna, the two leading Austrian biotechnology companies, announced that they have entered into a licensing agreement for the production of recombinant allergens.

VTU Technology, currently offering a very broad and comprehensive Pichia pastoris expression platform, grants Biomay access to VTU´s Pichia pastoris protein expression technology. Biomay, a global leader in allergy immunotherapy, will apply industrial Pichia expression strains generated by VTU for the commercial production of recombinant allergens. Under the terms of the agreement, VTU Technology will receive royalties based on Biomay´s worldwide sales of the recombinant allergens.

VTU Technology´s Pichia platform - standing out due to its diversity of expression tools and ingenious expression strategies - enables the production of high-performance expression strains, high-quality proteins and economically, viable protein production processes. “VTU´s Pichia platform has already been utilized for the production of a wide range of different recombinant proteins with licenses granted to companies from diverse industries. We are very happy to extend this list of partnerships to the allergen space by our agreement with Biomay”, said Thomas Purkarthofer, Head of Business Development at VTU Technology.

“For Biomay, this technology cooperation with VTU is an excellent option for manufacturing of allergens being difficult to express,” adds Hans Huber, chief operating officer at Biomay. “Thereby, we recently managed to produce and offer for sale the major allergen from ragweed pollen, Amb a 1, as a recombinant product.”