Wallonia grants 2.4 million euros to Univercells

Univercells, a biotech company based in Charleroi, received 2.4 million euros from the Walloon Region in order to develop a new antibody manufacturing platform. This new program aims to reduce the company’s manufactured products prices.

The Walloon Minister of the Economy, Pierre-Yves Jeholet (MR) granted 2.4 million euros to Univercells. This regional grant will enable the company to launch a program aimed at developing its innovative protein platform, paving the way for the cost-effective production of biosimilars.

Biosimilars are biological products that contain known biological active substances similar to the reference product already authorised in Europe. Biosimilarity applies to all biological products with patents in public domain.

Affordable biological products

The growing demand for affordable biological products requires the control of production costs in order to reduce their commercial price. Currently prohibitive costs and low availability of these products do not ensure an equal access worldwide.

According to Univercells the creation of this platform will enable the company to deploy low-prices production units throughout the world and will give access to quality biological products regardless of location. This subvention will be used for the production of products that might help for serious diseases such as cancers, autoimmune and rare diseases.

“We are very appreciative of the continuing support from Wallonia” said Hugues Bultot, co-founder and CEO of Univercells. “The region has supported Univercells since its early days, with a successful earlier project leading to the commercial development of our vaccine micro-facility. We are confident this second platform will demonstrate the same favourable outcome and aid in fostering access to healthcare worldwide.”

In order to enter non-European Union markets, Univercells also benefited from subsidies granted by the Walloon Export and Foreign Investment Agency (AWEX). In this way it had the opportunity to explore and establish contacts in various countries such as Russia, Brazil, Ecuador, the United States and Tunisia. Various participations in fairs and exhibitions like Biosimilars and Biobetters in London and Bionet Asia Workshop in Bangkok have enabled the company to make contact with the pharmaceutical industry.

Founded in 2013, Univercells is established in the Biopark Charleroi Brussels South and currently employs around 50 people. Last December the biotechnology company raised 3 million euros and was rewarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These donors put their trust in Univercells’ expertise to produce low-cost polio vaccines – less than 0.15$/dose – for the developing countries.