Sunflower Therapeutics (Sunflower), a public benefit corporation transforming global access to protein manufacturing capacity, today announced it has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Phase II award provides $2 million in funding for the over two years to support the company’s project, “Pioneering continuous cell disruption for efficient commercial scale virus-like particle (VLP) biomanufacturing”.

This Phase II funding will allow Sunflower to build upon its successful Phase I demonstrations to advance automated, continuous bioprocessing technologies that make the production of VLPs more efficient and affordable. Led by Sunflower’s President and CEO, Kerry Love, the project focuses on developing a fully continuous cell disruption platform designed to simplify VLP recovery, which is traditionally the dominant cost component of commercial VLP manufacturing.

“In Phase I we demonstrated the commercial potential of continuous cell disruption to make VLP manufacturing significantly more cost-effective,” said Dr. Michael Sheets-Wheeler, Associate Director of R&D at Sunflower Therapeutics. “This Phase II award enables us to develop this technology into a commercially ready continuous cell disruption unit operation that will streamline the vaccine manufacturing process, making these critical treatments available to all who need them and furthering our mission to democratize biomanufacturing.”

There remains an urgent need to improve VLP manufacturing to prevent vaccine shortages and lower production costs. VLPs are highly effective vaccine platforms that drive robust immune responses and already are used in approved vaccines against hepatitis B, malaria, and human papillomavirus (HPV). Conventional batch cultivation and harvest unit operations used for VLP manufacturing incur high costs that limit global access to these critical biologics, especially in the Global South. By combining high space-time yields with streamlined recovery, Sunflower’s approach has the potential to significantly lower costs, expand access to life-saving vaccines, and enable decentralized manufacturing in small-footprint facilities worldwide.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 4R44AI191984-02. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

To learn more about Sunflower’s accessible approach to bioprocessing, please visit sunflowertx.com.

About Sunflower Therapeutics

Sunflower Therapeutics is a unique biotech with a mission to transform bioeconomies worldwide by creating accessible solutions for protein product development and commercial manufacturing. Using our core technologies – an efficient host, data-driven methods for process development, and continuous biomanufacturing equipment – our team aims to democratize bioprocessing.

Media gallery

About The Author
Business Wire