Earlier today, Oragenics announced that it has produced an exponential increase in the fermentation titer of the target compound MU1140 via an Exclusive Channel Collaboration (ECC) with Intrexon Corporation, a synthetic biology company. Oragenics also discovered a promising new purification process for this product.

This latest progress in the lab demonstrates an important advance towards the commercial production of Oragenics’ lead lantibiotic, MU1140, and delivers an important step in validating the lantibiotics platform targeting infectious diseases. Oragenics and Intrexon have combined their efforts and expertise to produce a pipeline of new lantibiotics that have been shown to be active against essentially all Gram-positive pathogens, including vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), Clostridium difficile, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), as well as multi-drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Dr. John N. Bonfiglio, Chief Executive Officer of Oragenics, stated, “The ability to manufacture MU1140 by fermentation was originally thought not to be commercially feasible due to low titers and difficulties in purification. The Oragenics-Intrexon ECC clearly shows that the application of specific expertise in these areas represents a breakthrough by developing a potentially viable commercial process for these important anti-infective agents.”

According to today’s news release, Oragenics and Intrexon are also working to leverage Intrexon’s genetic and cell engineering proficiencies to produce analogs of MU1140 and a pipeline of new lantibiotics. “We believe the newly developed process will provide for the first time, the necessary quantities of MU1140 to complete critical development activities,” emphasized Dr. Bonfiglio.

For more information on Orangenics and its peptide antibiotics, visit www.oragenics.com

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