EnWave Corporation Announces Major Advancement In Pharmaceutical Dehydration Technology

EnWave Corporation ("EnWave" or "the Company") recently announced that it has made a major innovation in its Radiant Energy Vacuum ("REV") pharmaceutical dehydration technology to allow for a significant reduction in the moisture content of dried vaccine products.

The new technology, called freezeREV, provides high-speed live pharmaceutical dehydration with the potential for lower energy and processing costs than conventional technology being used by the industry today. Vaccines dehydrated using freezeREV technology also had lower residual moisture content than vaccines processed using EnWave's bioREV dehydration technology. Moisture rates between 3 and 3.5 per cent, considered an acceptable industry standard, have now been achieved using the single-vial freezeREV prototype. EnWave has also filed a patent application for freezeREV covering both the technology and the processing method.

Vaccines dried to a low moisture content would be capable of withstanding longer storage at higher room temperatures without losing a significant amount of live activity ("bioactivity"), and therefore effectiveness. Production of dried live pharmaceuticals, such as vaccines, storable at room temperatures would be considered a major industry breakthrough. Dried vaccines with long shelf-life could be shipped worldwide, stored without the need for expensive, constant refrigeration, and stockpiled to protect against pandemic diseases and bioterrorism. The current "gold standard" for dehydrating many liquid pharmaceuticals is freeze drying ("lyophilization"). This process is expensive, time consuming and often results in significant loss of bioactivity during dehydration.

EnWave has been working with its collaboration partner Aridis Pharmaceuticals, LLC ("Aridis) of San Jose, California to determine the feasibility of dehydrating vaccines and antibodies using bioREV technology which rapidly dehydrates liquid pharmaceuticals at temperatures above freezing. In March 2008, the Company announced that Aridis had discovered a higher residual moisture content using bioREV than what is typically considered optimum in conventional freeze dried vaccines.

As a result of these findings, EnWave has developed freezeREV, a method to dehydrate vaccines from a frozen state capable of reducing the moisture level to industry standards. The freezeREV innovation permits microwave-assisted freeze drying and could be considered a major advancement in this area. Previous industry attempts to incorporate microwave technology into the freeze drying process have resulted in uncontrolled electrical discharge, or "arcing", which causes equipment and product damage, along with uneven drying rates. EnWave's proprietary freezeREV technology is designed to eliminate both of these problems while reducing the processing time to minutes from days for lyophilization.

"One of the advantages of freezeREV technology is that it is more compatible with freeze drying technology that is used by the industry today," explains John McNicol, President and Co-CEO of EnWave Corporation. "We are now evaluating commercial designs for a high-speed freezeREV vacuum microwave dehydrator capable of replacing a conventional freeze dryer with seamless integration into an existing plant configuration."

EnWave plans to complete dehydration testing on a number of vaccine and food culture materials using freezeREV technology to improve its process consistency, and measure recovery rates and long term shelf life. The Company is also searching for a collaboration partner with lyophilization manufacturing experience to support the commercial design and scale-up of the freezeREV equipment.

About EnWave
Using proprietary technologies developed in conjunction with the University of British Columbia, EnWave is focused on the development of new methods of dehydrating biological and food materials using Radiant Energy Vacuum technology under its bioREV, nutraREV, freezeREV and powderREV brands. REV technology combines microwave energy transfer with pressure control to dehydrate and alter structures and drive chemical reactions, thereby creating unique product characteristics for both food products and biomaterials such as dry vaccines and antibodies. More information about EnWave is available at www.enwave.net.

SOURCE: EnWave