Seqirus, a business of CSL Limited, announced an investment in a new Research and Development (R&D) facility located in Waltham, Mass. The new facility will support the company's growing R&D portfolio, with a focus on a self-amplifying messenger RNA (sa-mRNA) technology platform, the next generation of mRNA technology. The facility will serve as the company's central R&D hub for current and future vaccine design, and collaborations with stakeholders from across the industry and academia.
"As our R&D investments and capabilities grow significantly, so too has demand for the additional space needed to advance our pipeline and fortify our broad portfolio of differentiated influenza vaccines," said Ethan Settembre, PhD, Vice President, Research at Seqirus. "We're excited to expand our footprint in the Boston area and to build out our R&D capabilities as we look to usher in a new era of excellence in vaccine development."
The custom-built facility consists of approximately 140,000 square feet overall including 54,000 square feet of lab space, with the ability to house about 300 full-time employees. All ongoing R&D programs currently taking place in Cambridge, Mass. will transition to the Waltham facility in the coming months. The new site is expected to be fully operational by mid-2022.
sa-mRNA Program
"The new facility and expanded workforce capacity will allow Seqirus to accelerate our sa-mRNA R&D program in a key location," said Roberta Duncan, Vice President, mRNA Program Lead at Seqirus. "With clinical trials for seasonal and pandemic sa-mRNA influenza vaccine candidates commencing this year, the new facility will guide the advancement of our sa-mRNA platform through to commercialization."
mRNA vaccines help protect against infectious diseases by giving instructions to cells in the body to make a protein, stimulating an immune response and leaving a blueprint to recognize and fight future infection. sa-mRNA also instructs the body to replicate the mRNA encoding for the protein, which then amplifies the amount of protein made. This could enable the development of vaccines that can be more effective with a smaller dosage and with lower rates of reactogenicity. This further supports the inherent value of this technology in both pandemic and seasonal influenza. In preclinical research, sa-mRNA technology demonstrated the potential to raise stronger cellular responses against a pathogen and express higher levels of protein using the same dose level as mRNA.
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