Novel Bio announces collaborative partnership with Culture Biosciences to scale-up NBx Platformtm for plasmid DNA production

Novel Bio, a leader in next-generation biomanufacturing technologies for plasmid DNA for use in genetic medicines, announced today that they have formed a partnership with Culture Biosciences to accelerate the development of scalable fermentation processes for their proprietary NBx Platformtm for plasmid DNA production.

Since the 1970s, plasmid DNA has been produced using the simple bacterium E. coli. As genetic medicines continue to rise in prominence and complexity, new biomanufacturing solutions are required to keep pace. For the past 2 years Novel Bio has been developing a new microbe to solve key manufacturing challenges. After optimizing the microbe's genetics via synthetic biology and proving the benefits at laboratory scale, the team is optimizing the fermentation parameters to enable large-scale manufacturing.

"We have generated data showing the scalability of the NBx Platformtm in bioreactors under commercially relevant conditions, but required rapid access to a significant number of bioreactors to properly optimize all of the process parameters for this new organism. Purchasing our own equipment would have been very expensive and required significant time to spin up," said Matthew Weinstock, CTO at Novel Bio. "Instead, we decided to partner with Culture Biosciences to access their amazing team and their custom-built, cloud-connected bioreactors. We simply design the experiments, and they execute them, giving us real-time access to the data via the cloud."

"We are excited to collaborate with Novel Bio to transform bioprocessing of microbial fermentation. This partnership will help drive needed innovation of fermentation processes using Novel Bio's NBx Platformtm technology." Darcy Birse, Ph.D., CCO "At Culture Biosciences, we partner with process development scientists and engineers leveraging our cloud-connected bioreactors with real-time full data transparency and data-science driven analytics to deliver robust, optimized bioprocesses. Our collaboration with Novel Bio will help advance innovative fermentation."

About Culture Biosciences

At Culture Biosciences, we engineer modern tools to create a world where bioprocess is never the bottleneck. We partner with Biopharma/Biotech scientists and engineers who develop therapeutics accelerating cell culture process development (PD). Culture Biosciences utilizes innovative cloud-connected bioreactors and data science capabilities driving the digital transformation of biomanufacturing. Culture's real-time data analysis and data-driven modeling capabilities enable clients to accelerate their biomanufacturing screening and optimization work. Culture works with Clients collaborating with PD labs on design of experiments (DoE), debottlenecking PD and de-risking bioprocess outcomes.

About Novel Bio

Novel Bio is on a mission to develop advanced biomanufacturing solutions for plasmid DNA for gene therapy, cell engineering, RNA therapeutics, vaccines, and other pharmaceutical applications. We are developing platforms that are safe, scalable, adaptable to different plasmid backbones and payloads, demonstrate improved product quality, and are more productive than existing technologies.