AIBN Seminar Series A mosquito cell culture platform for the manufacture of arbovirus vaccines
AbstractDiseases caused by viruses transmitted by mosquitos (arboviruses), such as Dengue fever, Yellow fever, Zika, West Nile, Ross River Virus and Chikungunya virus, present a huge global disease burden, particularly to developing nations in the tropics. Despite over 2 billion people being potentially at risk, there are only a few effective vaccines for a subset of these diseases. In this seminar I will outline a novel vaccine platform developed by researchers in the SCMB at UQ. This vaccine technology is based on an insect-specific virus that replicates only in mosquito cells (Binjari Virus). Binajri virus can be easily modified to express the coat proteins of pathogenic arboviruses, whilst remaining non-infectious to vertebrates, thus forming the basis of a safe and effective “chimeric” virus vaccine platform. This seminar will focus on our attempts to scale up production of these chimeric viruses by developing upstream bioprocesses for culturing the Aedes albopictus mosquito cell line known as the C6/36 cell line. I will also discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in translating this research into commercial outcomes, with an emphasis on veterinary vaccines. |
Bio
Dr Henry de Malmanche is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Roy Hall at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at UQ. He completed his PhD at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology where he worked on using CRISPR-Cas9 cell line engineering strategies to enhance the productivity of the Sf9 insect cell line. He has experience in animal cell culture, virus bioprocessing, genome editing and molecular biology. His research has focussed on using synthetic biology and biotechnology techniques to improve the yields of virus production in various cell culture systems.
About AIBN Seminar Series
The AIBN Seminar series showcases a range of seminars across different topics and disciplines