GE Healthcare and Valneva collaboration delivers optimsed cell culture medium for vaccine production

Collaboration jointly developed a new medium optimised for productivity of virus expression in EB66 cells.

Medical technology provider GE Healthcare, together with Valneva SE, a fully integrated vaccine biotech company, have announced the result of a collaborative study to develop a cell culture medium to support the production of a wide variety of vaccines.

The study aimed to optimise productivity in Valneva’s EB66 cell-line, a proprietary technology used in the production of vaccines. EB66 cells produce viruses such as measles, influenza A and B strains and intracellular viruses such as the Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) virus.

The collaboration has resulted in the creation of a commercial cell culture medium, developed to address the challenges of media variability. HyClone CDM4Avian, supports efficient and predictable virus production for manufacturers using EB66 cells.

The medium is chemically-defined and free from animal-derived components to simplify the regulatory process for products developed in EB66 cells.

Morgan Norris, general manager for Upstream and Cell Culture, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: “Working in close collaboration with Valneva, and capturing their expertise in vaccine production, has enabled us to successfully enhance productivity and create a novel cell culture medium for a vaccine industry undergoing a period of exciting change. The advent of cell-based production is helping manufacturers meet the growing need for vaccines to address global healthcare challenges.”

Thomas Lingelbach, president and CEO, and Franck Grimaud, deputy CEO of Valneva, added: “This collaboration with GE has been very successful and we are extremely pleased that our EB66 licensees now have access to a medium that will greatly ease the development of their new products. Coupled with the recent European Medicine Agency’s (EMA) decision to allow the production of live attenuated vaccines in cell-lines like EB66, this strongly supports the choice of EB66 as a modern cell technology platform for vaccine development and manufacturing.” 

Until now, only inactivated vaccines could be developed in EB66 cells in Europe. The EMA recently decided to issue new guidelines on vaccine production in immortal cell lines allowing Valneva’s partners to now utilise the EB66 cell line to develop and manufacture live-attenuated vaccines (LAV), including Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA)-based vaccines, measles and oncolytic vaccines.