Agarigen’s proprietary biologics manufacturing technology is based on two complementary components.  The cornerstone of the MMP™ system is the ability to genetically modify mushrooms to express therapeutic proteins.  This groundbreaking technology was developed by Agarigen cofounder, Dr. Peter Romaine at The Pennsylvania State University.  Agarigen has exclusively licensed this process along with rights to all future technology developed by Dr. Romaine.  The second component is technology created by Agarigen cofounder Dr. Donald Walters for the efficient recovery and purification of protein-based drugs from mushrooms.  The combination of these two innovations enables Agarigen to produce high-quality biologics at a fraction of their current cost.

The MMP™ system combines the advantages of the low-cost commodity production practices sought by PMP platform developers with the fast timelines and complete containment of conventional microbial fermentation systems that are currently favored by the biopharmaceutical industry.  The benefits of the MMP™ system are a function of the unique qualities of the mushroom, which can be summarized as follows:

•  Fast and inexpensive to create biologic-producing mushroom lines
•  Mushroom lines can be quickly expanded to produce bulk quantities of the protein drug
•  Mushrooms can be grown rapidly and inexpensively in complete containment
•  Mushroom production is rapidly scalable and not capital intensive
•  Mushrooms are a food crop and as such are GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA
•  Mushrooms can synthesize complex proteins required by many therapeutic applications