In Delaware, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a grant to DuPont Industrial Biosciences to create new production systems to enable affordable, protein-based biologic medications. To effectively manage outbreaks and provide affordable supply to people around the world, new approaches are needed for widespread production of high volume, affordable and rapid cycle time pharmaceutical proteins.
DuPont will use this grant to begin new research in the areas of protein engineering, pathway engineering and cell factories. When applied to pharmaceutical protein production, this approach has the potential to enable rapid scale-up and lower costs at high volumes, making protein drugs such as monoclonal antibodies potentially suitable for infectious diseases.
“We cannot underestimate the complexity of this challenge. At the same time, we cannot turn our backs on the possibility of improving access and affordability of life-saving medications for communities around the world,” said William F. Feehery, president, DuPont Industrial Biosciences.