KBP Awarded Patent for Development of Parvovirus Vaccine

OWENSBORO, Ky.—The United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded a patent to Owensboro based Kentucky BioProcessing, LLC, enabling production of a parvovirus vaccine with potential for both feline and canine applications. Parvovirus is a sometimes fatal infectious disease affecting many small animals including domesticated dogs and cats.

The issued patent, titled “Production of Parvovirus Vaccine in Plants as Viral Coat Protein Fusions” builds on KBP’s already patented GENEWARE^® technology to define methods and enable production of a potentially commercially viable parvovirus vaccine in tobacco plants. This plant-made solution holds the promise to be both more economical and more effective in preventing the disease than other products currently on the market.

The Parvovirus Vaccine Patent adds to KBP’s already impressive intellectual property portfolio that includes both US and International patents and pending applications related to the expression of genes in plants, biomanufacturing, novel plant varieties and antibodies.

The GENEWARE^® system is owned by KBP and is widely recognized as one of the world’s most potent, robust and effective plant-based gene expression systems and uses a specifically altered tobacco mosaic virus as a vector to carry genes to reprogram plant cells to produce the recombinant proteins of interest. Once this altered virus is introduced into a host plant, the natural growth of the plant causes the protein to be reproduced in larger quantities. Expression of antigens in plant systems offers the potential for products of appropriately-folded viral antigens under cost-effective and favorable agricultural scale conditions.