Dr Veraitch & Tecrea awarded £100k MedCity Grant

Dr Farlan Veraitch (Biochemical Engineering) together with Tecrea has won a £100k grant from MedCity to work on the evaluation and optimization of Lentivirus production using Nanocin™ technology. Tecrea is a a spinout from the Royal Veterinary College and this 12 month project will apply their low toxicity DNA delivery technology to improve the production of Lentivirus for cell and gene therapy applications.

The bioprocessing industry is currently unable to sufficiently scale production of Lentivirus to meet the projected needs of the rapidly developing gene therapy applications. The need for multiple plasmids presents efficiency and toxicity problems. Tecrea Ltd has developed exciting low-tox pDNA delivery technology (Nanocin™) that can potentially overcome the problem. In this project, the UCL lab will evaluate and optimise a Lenti-virus production protocol, aiming to provide evidence of efficient Lentivirus production using conditions that are relevant to Bioprocessing manufacturers. The outcome will be a standardised and validated protocol and insight into difficulties and opportunities in the area.

Sarah Haywood, CEO of MedCity said:

“There are over 1,000 life sciences companies across London and the South East discovering life-changing therapies, developing AI and VR technologies, and using smartphones to help people manage their care.

“Sometimes you just need a helping hand with the last piece of the puzzle, to get the idea from mind to market. I’m excited to be able to match 16 ground-breaking SMEs with academics from our leading universities to develop their innovations and make them commercially viable.”