Rebecca Miller

Commercializing cell-derived heparins for improved anticoagulant medicines

Applicant

Rebecca Miller

Project drescription

The World Health Organization has had anticoagulant heparin on its essential medicines list for nearly fifty years. Despite this, it is not suitable for all patients due to being an animal-derived product. Heparin production from pig intestines presents multiple challenges, including contamination risk, viral impurities, insecure supply chain, and a large carbon foot-print. It also has a major-life threatening side-effect of heparin induced thrombocytopenia (HIT). To solve these challenges, our innovative solution has been to create a cell culture-derived anticoagulant heparin that does not have this HIT side-effect, to ensure stability of supply, product consistency and to make heparin available to patients that (for medical, religious, or dietary reasons) are unable to have pig products. The SPARK Denmark program enables our activities in pre-clinical studies which lays the foundation for commercial opportunities and clinical progression of a sustainable heparin with a more favourable safety profile.

Institution

University of Copenhagen