iBio, Inc., a biotechnology company specializing in developing and manufacturing plant-based biological products, has formed a joint venture with affiliates of Eastern Capital Limited to develop and manufacture plant-made pharmaceuticals.

Eastern and iBio have capitalized a newly-formed subsidiary of iBio, iBio CMO LLC, to create a contract manufacturing organization for the development, scale-up, and large-scale manufacturing of biologicals. The Eastern Affiliates contributed $15 million in cash to the venture for 30% of the equity. iBio contributed research and manufacturing licenses of iBio's proprietary intellectual property for plant-made production of biopharmaceuticals. iBio will retain a 70% equity interest.

iBio CMO LLC entered into a 35-year operating lease with the Eastern Affiliates, to control a 139,000 square foot Class A life sciences building located on approximately 21 acres in Bryan, Texas. The facility, previously owned by Caliber Biotherapeutics LLC and its affiliates, and now owned by the Eastern Affiliates, is located on a technology corridor abutting the campus of Texas A & M University, home of the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing, a center for research in the production of vaccines and protein therapeutics.

Coincident with formation of the joint venture, Eastern agreed to purchase 10.0 million additional shares of iBio common stock at $0.622 per share, a 30% premium to the closing price on January 12, through a private placement in two tranches. The first tranche of 3.5 million shares will be purchased after New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) approval of a listing application therefor. Concurrent with the closing of the 3.5 million share purchase, Eastern will exercise 1.784 million $0.53 warrants it owns for iBio shares of common stock representing 100% of the warrants Eastern held from prior iBio financings. The second tranche of 6.5 million shares will be purchased, subject to shareholders' approval at a meeting of shareholders expected to be convened in February 2016 and NYSE approval of a listing application therefor. Upon closing of the second tranche, a standstill agreement would become effective to limit additional acquisitions by Eastern of iBio common shares to a maximum of 38% of outstanding shares, absent approval by a majority of iBio's board of directors.

Certain key former employees of Caliber Biotherapeutics have joined iBio CMO to continue ongoing operations and the projects currently underway for iBio in the facility. iBio and Caliber have worked together since 2012, collaborating on a range of projects, such as antiviral therapeutic antibodies, including those for Dengue fever and Ebola virus disease. The collaboration was extended in 2013 to include additional technologies developed by iBio, in collaboration with Novici Biotech, designed to offer superior alternatives to traditional methods of biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing.

iBio's proprietary technology was the basis of the Accelerating Critical Therapeutics program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). iBio technology was then licensed to Caliber for the DARPA “Blue Angel” project. The “Blue Angel” project demonstrated successful use of the technology on a commercial scale. The iBio CMO facility can grow over 4 million plants hydroponically as “in process inventory” and can deliver over 300 kilograms of finished therapeutic protein per year. This translates into more than a half million doses per year of a typical therapeutic antibody. In the context of a vaccine intended to control a pandemic outbreak, this translates into 50 million vaccine doses produced from availability of vaccine gene sequence to delivery in twelve weeks of completed product, and the ability to produce approximately 50 million doses every three weeks thereafter. Facility capacity can be doubled by adding additional plant growth equipment in a space already reserved for that purpose.

Several proprietary advances over the first generation pilot plant based upon iBio technology are built into the iBio CMO facility: custom designed LED illumination systems; large-scale automated hydroponic growth systems; a high-throughput, high-capacity vacuum infiltration system; and flexible, moveable downstream process modules for rapid reconfiguration changes required for the production of a new protein therapeutic or vaccine target.

iBio is developing proprietary products for the treatment of a range of fibrotic diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, systemic sclerosis, and scleroderma. IBIO-CFB03, produced using the company's iBioLaunch gene expression platform, is the first product candidate from this program being advanced for investigational new drug development. The company also offers proprietary products and product licenses to others, based on its proprietary iBioLaunch gene expression and iBioModulator thermostable immunomodulator protein platforms, providing collaborators full support for turnkey implementation of its technology for protein therapeutics and vaccines. In Brazil, iBio has formed a subsidiary company, iBio do Brasil Biofarmaceutical Ltda., and has been collaborating with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) to develop a recombinant yellow fever vaccine based on iBio technology.

Source: iBio