PharmAthene gets exclusive rights to Percivia's PER.C6 cell line for recombinant bioscavenger

US biomedical firm PharmAthene, Inc. (NYSE MKT: PIP) says it has entered into an exclusive commercial license for the use of Percivia's proprietary PER.C6 technology platform in the production of PharmAthene's next generation recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBChE) bioscavenger. Financial terms of the accord were not revealed.

The PER.C6 platform is a human, cell-based manufacturing system that enables the production of high quality, cost effective biological products for the life sciences industry with the added benefit of being fully human, unlike products manufactured using other expression systems.

"The PER.C6 platform offers many advantages over our initial transgenic approach, which successfully completed a Phase I clinical study. These include, the opportunity for higher production yields with substantially reduced production costs and the capability for rapid scale up in the event of a chemical weapons attack," commented Eric Richman, president and chief executive of PharmAthene, adding: "Also, since it is based on a recombinant human cell line, the PER.C6 platform should enable a final product with a pharmacokinetic profile that more closely matches the naturally occurring butyrylcholinesterase found in human plasma."