NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2002-- AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVAN - News) today announced that the company has agreed in principle to acquire the technology and intellectual property portfolio of Universal Preservation Technologies, Inc. (UPT), a privately held company based in San Diego, California, and to license certain patent rights from Elan Drug Delivery Limited (a subsidiary of Elan Corporation plc). Through this transaction, AVANT will gain exclusive rights to UPT's VitriLife® process for use in AVANT's oral vaccines and certain other non-injectable applications. VitriLife is a patented drying method for the industrial-scale preservation of biological solutions and suspensions, such as proteins, enzymes, viruses, bacteria and other cells, for shipping and storage at or above room temperature. AVANT plans to complete its acquisition of the UPT technology, patents and license agreements by year-end. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The planned acquisition of UPT's assets includes only technology and patents; AVANT will not acquire UPT's San Diego facility or employees in this transaction.
"This technology acquisition is a valuable one for AVANT's vaccine programs, as VitriLife has the potential to both significantly reduce vaccine manufacturing costs and improve product stability eliminating the need for refrigeration," said Una Ryan, Ph.D., AVANT President and Chief Executive Officer. "This capability would provide great benefits for vaccine distributors in the United States and elsewhere, as well as for biodefense and food safety/animal health applications. In addition, it offers the possibility for AVANT to directly address market needs worldwide in areas of endemic disease, where affordable oral vaccines for serious bacterial illnesses could provide a real boon."
As part of the acquisition, Elan Drug Delivery Limited (EDD) has agreed to settle a patent interference with UPT. That settlement provides for UPT to assign certain patent rights to EDD and for EDD to license UPT's and other related patents to AVANT. EDD's license to AVANT (for which EDD will receive a one-time license fee) gives AVANT exclusive rights in connection with those patents relating to orally administered vaccines and non-exclusive rights in certain other fields.
"The UPT acquisition will also give AVANT two new partners, who are licensees of the VitriLife technology, and thus leverage our ownership of that new resource outside AVANT's own area of focus," said Dr. Ryan. "The first licensee is Fort Dodge Animal Health, a division of Wyeth that is the number one veterinary vaccine manufacturer in the world. The second licensee is Stratagene, a leading developer and marketer of products for life science researchers, who has licensed the technology for use with its competent cell products for cloning and protein expression."
About the VitriLife® process
VitriLife is a patented method for the industrial scale preservation of biological suspensions, such as proteins, enzymes, viruses, bacterial and cells. This method uses a drying technology to encase these biological materials in a glass-like coating that enables their stable storage and transportation at room temperature or potentially higher temperatures. VitriLife is a gentle manufacturing process that is a simpler alternative to conventional freeze-drying (lyophilization) of vaccines or other products, cutting the time and cost of this manufacturing step significantly from conventional methods while increasing final product yields. Additionally, use of the VitriLife process increases the ease of further product processing into fine powders, thus facilitating bulk processing and packaging and enhancing the ability to mix multiple vaccine powders into combination vaccines... |
