Virica Biotech, a cell enhancer company specialising in Viral Sensitisers (VSE) for viral vector manufacturing, announced it is receiving advisory services and funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP), under the Canada–Japan Corporate Co-Innovation Program for a collaboration with FUJIFILM Biosciences. The collaboration will focus on optimising a VSE formulation for FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 media to support academic and commercial AAV producers globally.

AAV vectors are a cornerstone of in vivo gene delivery for gene therapies, but they remain difficult and expensive to manufacture at scale. As pipelines expand to more indications and broader patient populations, significantly greater amounts of high-quality AAV are required, while the need for commercially viable therapies places pressure on the cost-of-goods. Current manufacturing methods and underlying economics are often not sufficient to meet this demand. By pairing high-performance FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD media with Virica’s VSE enhancers, the collaboration aims to deliver significant AAV productivity gains and more robust, scalable processes.

To support FUJIFILM Biosciences’ product strategy, Virica will optimise VSE formulations and process parameters for AAV production in FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 media with suspension HEK293 cells. This work will leverage Virica’s High-Throughput Virology (HTV) platform, Design-of-Experiments (DoE) frameworks, and analytical testing. FUJIFILM Biosciences will contribute deep expertise in media and feed supplements and scale-up capabilities to the collaborative project. The project, supported by NRC IRAP, aims to generate VSE formulations tailored with the FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 system, enabling an off-the-shelf enhancer–media combination that end users can adopt with minimal process changes.

“We see a strong fit between our VSE technology and FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD media portfolio,” said Dr Jean-Simon Diallo, scientific co-founder and chief executive officer of Virica Biotech. “Following the recent launch of our CellVantage AAV off-the-shelf enhancer, our goal is to provide an optimised formulation to deliver further AAV productivity gains specifically in the FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 system.”

“We remain committed to offering integrated solutions that combine high-performance media with enabling technologies,” said Yutaka Yamaguchi, chairman and chief executive officer at FUJIFILM Biosciences. “Optimising Virica’s VSE-based enhancers with our FUJIFILM Biosciences BalanCD HEK293 system will help us deliver an easy-to-implement option for improving AAV yields and supporting efficient scale-up for our customers.”