Tric-mAbs: Trichoderma reesei as a Production Platform for Low-Cost Monoclonal Antibodies in Malaria Prevention

Antti Aalto with Pedro Gonçalves of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd in Finland will develop a biomanufacturing platform for low-cost production of the antimalarial monoclonal antibody MAM01 using the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei as the protein expression system. They will create candidate production strains, incorporating different expression cassettes for synthetic MAM01 sequences and pairing them with different host strain genetic backgrounds optimized for expression. The resulting strains will be cultivated in small-scale bioreactors, testing multiple bioprocess conditions from cultivation through sequential steps for antibody capture and purification. They will create models of the technical and economic factors required for low-cost production, as well as an analysis of environmental impact, including water usage and waste generation of the production process, comparing this impact with available data for antibody production using mammalian cell culture systems.

This grant is one of three grants that are funded and administered by LifeArc.