The seamless functioning of our planet relies heavily on the immense contributions of animals. They hold a crucial position in maintaining environmental balance, sustaining ecosystems, and impacting our daily lives. Therefore, prioritizing their well-being becomes paramount.
The illnesses that afflict animals have a direct impact on human health as well. By preventing and managing diseases, we not only foster economic growth and support local communities, but also enhance the health of susceptible groups including our children and seniors.
Esco Aster understands the importance of prioritizing animal health and well-being. Embracing translational research using the One Health approach, we are dedicated to ensuring the vitality of animals in various aspects. Our CRDMO capabilities encompass vaccines, stem cells and exosomes extending to animal proteins, agriculture, and the bioindustry.
Nurturing animals’ lives through proactive vaccination practices
The benefits of vaccines have long been understood by generations of parents who’ve protected the health of their children. Similarly, for farmers, veterinarians and pet owners, vaccines provide essential protections against illness in livestock and pets.
Shielding the animals against zoonotic diseases not only preserves their health but also prevents transmission to humans. Therefore, the positive impact of vaccination not only benefits them, but also extends to the public health as well.
With an aim of ensuring a reliability of vaccine supply and immunization to support the growing livestock and poultry industry, our proprietary Tide Motion® technology offers the means of achieving high-cell density working cell bank cultures to support the scalable production of veterinary vaccines.
The Tide Motion® manufacturing platform offers a smooth and seamless vaccine production workflow.
In addition, a modularly integrated system with our Cell Processing Isolator (CPI), helps to localize vaccine production making it more affordable - in terms of CAPEX & OPEX - for developing countries by ensuring a smooth bioprocessing workflow.
Cell lines are permanently established culture of animal cells that can be propagated repeatedly. Their usage is the most convenient method for virus cultivation in the laboratory which are to be utilized in different applications.
Our animal vaccine portfolio comprises of the following adherent cell lines:
During the past 20 years, fish vaccines have become an established, proven, and cost-effective method of controlling certain infectious diseases in aquaculture worldwide. Fish vaccines can significantly reduce specific disease-related losses resulting in a reduction of antibiotic use.
Fish vaccines are advantageous over antibiotics because they are natural biological materials that leave no residue in the product or the environment, and therefore will not induce a resistant strain of the disease organism.
At Esco Aster, we help collaborators in providing autogenous vaccines tailored for specific disease and farm.
Culture conditions tend to be variable for different cell lines and very high cell densities; hence vaccines with a high titer which are capable of eliciting good immune responses have been achieved in TideXcell™ bioreactors.
As a consequence of high cell densities and high viral titers in the range of 8 log10 frequently the Tide Motion® bioreactors are able to effectively replace static culture systems as shown below:
Titer = 7 X TCID50 per ml
Titer = 7.167 TCID50 per ml
In the past decade, the potential to translate scientific discoveries in the area of regenerative therapeutics in veterinary species to novel, effective human therapies has gained interest from the scientific and public domains. Innovative cell and gene therapies are an area of rapid development that can prevent and ameliorate pain and suffering in companion animals and humans alike.
The most well-studied cell type in veterinary medicine, ex-vivo expanded mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are adherent cells that have regenerative and immunomodulatory properties through their paracrine activity.
The most common and successful veterinary use of MSCs treats osteoarthritis in dogs, as well as injuries to bones, joints, tendons, ligaments, and the spinal cord. Early research also shows that MSCs might successfully treat dry eye in dogs and stomatitis a severe, painful oral disease in cats.
As a CRDMO, Esco Aster’s proprietary technology utilizing Tide Motion bioreactors is ideal in cultivating billions of anchorage dependent cells like MSCs. Our technology saves space, utilities and labor requirements due to its compact and automated design especially when compared to roller bottles or multi-layered culture wares.
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are pluripotent cells that can be obtained by reprogramming animal and human differentiated cells. They are widely used in therapeutics for disease modeling, regenerative medicine, and drug discovery.
As of today, there has been an accumulation of iPSC researches for domestic animals (e.g. porcine, equine, canine, feline, bovine, etc.). Aside from their benefit in treating veterinary pathologies, porcine, equine and canine models have been shown to be valuable for the study and treatment of human diseases as well.
With Esco Aster’s deep expertise in iPSC reprogramming, we offer iPSC differentiation services utilizing our streamed-line protocols and proprietary Tide Motion® technologies.
First approved by the USFDA in 2017 to treat B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, CAR-T cell therapy is one of most promising new treatments for cancer. It uses the patient’s T cells modified by gene therapy to express a recombinant receptor that allows targeted cytolysis.
In relation with animal health, current studies suggest that canine cancers like B cell lymphoma complements preclinical models in testing and optimizing the safety and efficacy of these therapies including feasibility, toxicity profiles, immune correlates, and outcomes providing new treatment options for canine patients.
At Esco Aster, we leverage our expertise into the production of genetically-modified cell therapy such as CAR-T cells. Our adaptable and dynamic approaches employed across multiple cell types enable us to provide process design and developmental solutions all the way through manufacturing and supply.
Exosomes represent a potentially accurate and sensitive biomarkers, both in diagnosing and monitoring variety of diseases in humans and animals. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted by most cell types, and their function is in facilitating intracellular communication. Exosomes in both humans and veterinary medicine find their major application in neoplastic diseases.
Esco Aster’s patented and proprietary Tide Motion® technology is used for the continuous production of exosomes or EVs. This system is equipped with different process modes for ease of feed of fresh culture medium and harvest of secreted product. The harvested medium is clarified via filtration to remove cell debris and residual media components, post which, it is concentrated, and buffer exchanged to desirable media via tangential flow filtration (TFF). Purified EVs is formulated into a medical naïve EV product or be loaded with a specific cargo.