Virica Biotech (“Virica”), a cell enhancer company specializing in viral sensitizers (VSE™) for the production of viral vectors, today announced that it will receive advisory services and funding from Canada’s National Research Council Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) under the Japan-Canada Collaborative Innovation Program in partnership with Fujifilm Biosciences. This collaboration will focus on optimizing the VSE formulation of FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD® HEK293 medium to support academic and commercial AAV producers worldwide.
AAV vectors are alive Gene delivery for gene therapy, but remains difficult and expensive to manufacture at scale. As the pipeline expands to more indications and broader patient populations, significantly larger quantities and higher quality AAVs are required, while the need for commercially viable treatments is putting pressure on product costs. Current manufacturing methods and underlying economics are often insufficient to meet this demand. By combining high-performance FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD media with Virica’s VSE enhancer, this collaboration aims to significantly increase AAV productivity and enable a more robust and scalable process.
To support FUJIFILM Biosciences’ product strategy, Virica will optimize the VSE formulation and process parameters for AAV production in FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 medium containing suspended HEK293 cells. This research leverages Virica’s High-Throughput Virology (HTV™) platform, Design of Experiments (DoE) framework, and analytical testing. Fujifilm Bioscience will contribute its deep expertise and scale-up capabilities in culture media and feed supplements to the joint project. This project, supported by NRC IRAP, aims to produce a VSE formulation tailored to the FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 system, allowing for off-the-shelf enhancer and media combinations that end users can implement with minimal process changes.
We believe our VSE technology and FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD media portfolio are a great fit. Following the recent launch of the CellVantage-AAV off-the-shelf enhancer, our goal is to provide an optimized formulation that delivers further AAV productivity improvements, especially with the FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 System. ”
Dr. Jean-Simon Diallo, Scientific Co-Founder and CEO, Virica Biotech
“We remain committed to providing integrated solutions that combine high-performance media and enabling technology.” Yutaka Yamaguchi, Chairman and CEO of Fujifilm Bioscience, said: “By optimizing Virica’s VSE-based enhancer using our FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 system, we are able to provide an easy-to-implement option to improve AAV yields and support efficient scale-up for our customers.”
