OFMOM NEWSROOM

COREE partners with Infini Fluidics to develop new mRNA vaccine-making method

COREE Company has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Infini Fluidic of the U.S. to develop a new method in the microfluidic process producing mRNA vaccine lipid nanoparticle structures.

Lim Jong-yoon (left) and Infini Fluidic CEO Sagar Yadavali hold their cooperation agreement at the University of Pennsylvania on Monday.

Lim Jong-yoon also serves as the president of COREE Company.

Infini Fluidics, a spinoff company from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), develops manufacturing equipment and process technology for next-generation drug delivery systems based on microfluidics technology using semiconductor chip processes. Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) supports Infini Fluidics’ LNP drug delivery system production process research.

Under the accord, the two companies will cooperate to research a new microfluidic processing method, which is the most difficult part of manufacturing mRNA vaccines.

Infini Fluidic is researching a technology that can process ultra-fast microfluidics, helping to maximize the hourly throughput of the microfluidic process, a bottleneck in the production process, by enabling processing more than 128 times the existing production.

“Studies expanding the field of application of mRNA platform technology as a preventive or therapeutic agent for cancer, AIDS, autoimmune and genetic diseases, as well as vaccines for responding to future pandemics, are going on,” CEO Lim said.

Therefore, the collaboration with Infini Fluidic and UPenn researching new methods in the microfluidic process field is meaningful because it can lead to global new drugs based on independent technology rather than limited development by, for instance, evading the patents of existing technologies, Lim added.

A common goal of distributing vaccines worldwide, comprises COREE Company, GeneOne Life Science, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, BioApp Green Vaccine, Herings Digital Medical, Myongji Medical Foundation, GS Neotek, Pohang University of Science and Technology, and Pohang City.

The consortium has been expanding its partnership globally. For example, the consortium signed a global clinical trial plan for its mRNA vaccine with Oxford University last month through a pandemic science alliance agreement.

In the first half of next year, it will submit an investigational new drug (IND) application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for one of the three mRNA candidates that the consortium has secured through additional toxicity tests and process improvement studies.

Source: Korea Biomedical Review