The contractors were selected by DARPA as part of its three-phase accelerated manufacture of pharmaceuticals (AMP) programme, set up to develop novel manufacturing technologies that could radically reduce the time needed to make life-saving vaccines and monoclonal antibodies against a range of biological threats, thus enhancing the US' ability to rapidly and cost effectively respond in the event of a biological attack.

"Current production methods can take many months to optimise for large scale production, while a large scale manufacturing process and facility could require years to prepare," said Parrish Galliher, Xcellerex' founder, president and chief technology officer.

Total funding for the two contracts is worth over $13m (€9.4m) - the first being $7.9m - although it was not revealed how the money would be split between the contributing parties.

Xcellerex will serve as the prime contractor on the first grant, and will provide its PDMax process development and FlexFactory manufacturing technologies for phase I of DARPA's programme, which is focused on optimising host strains that will express a model vaccine and antibody, along with small scale production.

Dowpharma will provide the expertise to develop the Pseudomonas-based Pfenex host organism in which the drugs will be produced and deltaDOT's Peregrine and Osprey instruments will provide the critical analytical capabilities needed to track product quality throughout the drug development program. BioPharm Services will be providing advanced modelling capabilities for the biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

"The accelerated manufacture of pharmaceuticals program will twin rapid protein expression platforms with radically-enhanced technologies that enable extraordinarily fast production of peptide drugs at massive quantities and at pennies per dose," said Dr Michael Callahan, program manager for DARPA.

Meanwhile, the under the second of phase I contracts, Neugenesis, the prime contractor, will provide its NeuBIOS protein production technology and will also provide project management and integration systems for the team, as will SRI International. Again, Xcellerex will bring its PDMax process development and FlexFactory manufacturing technologies to the mix, and BioPharm Services and will be providing advanced modelling capabilities for the biopharmaceutical manufacturing.