HISTORY

Replikun Biotech Pty Limited is a private, venture capital backed company established in 2005.

Replikun Biotech’s origins date back to 1960, when Professor Edwin Westaway commenced research with the Kunjin virus isolated from Cx. annulirostris mosquitoes in northern Queensland by Professor Ralph Doherty. The virus was given the name of a nearby Aboriginal clan living on the Mitchell River. The discovery of Kunjin was exciting because it provided a safe means of studying flavivirus replication in the laboratory, defined for the first time by Professor Westaway at Monash University where, with his group, the molecular details of the Kunjin virus genome were also first defined.

In 1995, Professor Westaway and Associate Professor Alex Khromykh showed that the structural protein genes could be removed from the Kunjin genome without disturbing replication. The Kunjin genome was an ideal starting point for the development of a safe gene vector that could deliver therapeutic proteins to cells, without ever producing new virus particles in vivo. The result of their work was the invention of the Kunjin replicon.

Replikun’s founders recognized the significance of using viral-based technology to develop innovative products such as gene therapies and vaccines. The company recognized that at that time, the available technologies had failed to deliver products to market for lack of safety and efficacy. Too many vectors were based on human pathogens with ineradicable pathogenic features. Alternatively, the inefficiency of using naked DNA or RNA molecules to treat subjects precluded the development of protective immune responses.

This led to the development of the Kunjin replicon system: self-replicating vectors based on a native Australian flavivirus that never produces virus particles in vivo. Over the next few years the Kunjin replicon technology was found to have a much broader application than gene therapy and vaccination. The self-replicating vectors also produced extraordinarily high yields of therapeutic protein, when used to transfect industrial cell lines used for protein manufacture.

In 2002, Associate Professor Khromykh developed packaging cell line technologies for the manufacture of virus-like-particles (VLPs) based on the Kunjin structural proteins. VLPs are very efficient at infecting cells, and therefore act as the perfect delivery system for self-replicating Kunjin replicon vectors.

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