GigaGen Awarded Contract by U.S. Department of Defense to Discover Synthetic Human Antibody Treatments for High-Priority Toxins and Pathogens

South San Francisco, Calif., Sept. 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  GigaGen Inc., a biotechnology company advancing transformative antibody drugs for immune deficiencies, infectious diseases and checkpoint resistant cancers, and a subsidiary of Grifols, announced today it has entered into a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND) to demonstrate the utility of its first-in-class recombinant human polyclonal antibody discovery platform against biological threats of interest to the DOD.

The JPEO-CBRND awarded GigaGen this Prototype Agreement under the SPARK program, an idea incubator that fuels innovation and problem solving by providing funding for potentially transformative projects. As part of this award, GigaGen will demonstrate its platform’s capabilities by producing recombinant human hyperimmune products that target DOD-priority pathogens, including a recombinant polyclonal antibody drug designed to neutralize botulinum neurotoxins A and B, with high potency and military utility. The agreement will also allow the JPEO-CBRND to evaluate GigaGen’s platform against additional biological threats, and support functional testing, manufacturing, and clinical evaluation of recombinant polyclonal drugs that meet specific performance objectives.  

“We are proud to be working closely with the DOD to develop new and improved medical countermeasures against naturally emerging and intentional biological threats,” said Carter Keller, a senior vice president at Grifols and head of GigaGen. “Our novel technology platforms enable first-in-class recombinant polyclonal antibody drugs that combine the speed and scale of recombinant antibody manufacturing with the effectiveness of broadly neutralizing polyclonal antibody therapies. We look forward to using our platform to demonstrate the rapid response to pathogenic toxins like botulinum neurotoxins A and B, as well as other high-priority pathogens.”