XOMA Licensing Manufacturing Tech To Texas A&M, No Terms Disclosed

The Texas A&M University System and XOMA Corporation

, a leader in the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies, today announced that the Texas A&M University System agreed to a non-exclusive license for XOMA's innovative design of a manufacturing facility. The patented technology relates to a flexible arrangement of mobile clean rooms (MCRs) within the manufacturing facility with each MCR providing a portable, self-contained environment that allows for drug development. The A&M System will use MCRs for certain government programs at The National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing (NCTM) facility, a multidisciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center, located at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Details of the license were not disclosed. "Today's announcement is the culmination of years of collaborative work begun when Texas A&M assembled a small group of world leading experts to solve the manufacturing challenges essential for biosecurity," said Dr. Brett Giroir, Executive Vice President and CEO of the Texas A&M Health Science Center. "This team included Dr. Patrick Scannon and other XOMA experts, who developed concepts that have now been uniquely implemented by Texas A&M through our pioneering biomanufacturing facilities, including the Texas A&M Center for Innovation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The MCR technology is an important component of our vaccine and medical countermeasure technologies that may be important for responses to Ebola and other emerging diseases." "This license validates our flexible manufacturing design as it will be in practice initially at a well-known educational facility," stated Patrick J. Scannon, MD, PhD, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of XOMA. "Mobile clean rooms have the potential to transform the industry because of their 'plug and play' design, which offers benefits of easy scalability and reduced clean-out and set-up times. In addition, they offer the potential to respond to possible threats in locales where pharmaceutical or biologic manufacturing facilities are otherwise not available." The flexible manufacturing facility design allows MCRs to connect easily and quickly to a central supply of utilities such as air, water, and electricity. This unique arrangement facilitates flexible design and eliminates change-over downtime. This translates into significantly reduced capital expenditures, production costs, and maintenance costs while offering meaningful time advantages over conventional manufacturing facilities. When MCRs are not in use, they can be easily moved to cleaning/refurbishing areas and prepared MCRs can be "plugged in" for manufacturing.