February 1, 2022 -- Exopharm has signed a master collaborative services agreement with the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AIRM). The agreement entails laboratory work to demonstrate the effectiveness of Exopharm's LEAP, LOAD, and EVPS platforms using AIRM's cell-based therapeutic technologies.
The LEAP project will commence in early 2022 at Exopharm's laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, and will seek to validate Exopharm's LEAP technology to purify exosomes derived from two proprietary AIRM cell lines. A second phase will involve transferring LEAP technology to AIRM research headquarters in Massachusetts for further evaluation and use.
With the services Exopharm said it would conduct, two AIRM cell lines will be engineered to produce exosomes loaded with functional RNA (using Exopharm's LOAD platform) and the addition of external specified molecules of interest (using Exopharm's EVPS platform).
Under the terms of the agreement, AIRM will pay Exopharm $481,000 for both projects over 15 months, starting in March 2022. Exopharm is pursuing agreements with other large pharmaceutical companies, it said.