Immuno-oncology company Agenus Inc (NASDAQ:AGEN) reported on Thursday the receipt of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's USD1m grant to jointly develop an alternative, plant cell culture-based manufacturing process to ensure the continuous future supply of its QS-21 Stimulon adjuvant to power vaccines.

Agenus' QS-21 Stimulon is a proprietary adjuvant, currently incorporated as part of Glaxo Smith Kline's (GSK's) highly efficacious Shingrix vaccine. The QS-21 Stimulon is also used in GSK's Mosquirix vaccine and numerous other clinical-stage vaccines, including Agenus' own cancer vaccines.

QS-21 is currently extracted from Chilean soap bark trees, exclusively sourced from a localized area in Chile. Agenus now plans to develop a cell-culture based, environment friendly manufacturing technique as an alternative future supply.

The company added that the alternative manufacturing process for QS-21 will be developed in an exclusive partnership with Phyton Biotech2. Leveraging its Plant Cell Fermentation (PCF) technology, Phyton Biotech will attempt to demonstrate that PCF is a feasible model for the consistent, large-scale and low-cost commercial production of high-quality QS-21 directly from plant cell cultures.