Capacity to Produce 60 Million Friendly™ Aedes per Week can
Help Protect Up to 3 Million Brazilians from Primary Vector for
Zika, Dengue and other Viruses
OXFORD, England, Oct. 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intrexon
Corporation (NYSE: XON), a leader in the engineering and
industrialization of biology to improve the quality of life and
health of the planet, today announced its wholly owned subsidiary
Oxitec has opened its new Friendly™ Aedes mosquito production
facility in Piracicaba, Brazil. The new 5,000 m² facility has
the capacity to produce 60 million Friendly™ Aedes per week
which can help protect up to 3 million people by significantly
reducing local populations of the dangerous Aedes aegypti
mosquito.
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Lieutenant General (Ret.) Thomas P.
Bostick, Ph.D., P.E., Senior Vice President and Head of
Intrexon's Environment Sector stated, "The scalability of our
biological solution has taken a meaningful step forward with the
inauguration of this new world-class facility in Brazil. With
the rising global incidence of harmful viral infections including
Zika, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and now Mayaro, driven
primarily by the bite of the dangerous Aedes aegypti, it is
essential we make Oxitec's proven, unparalleled Friendly™ Aedes
vector control solution more available to the many countries this
disease-spreading mosquito has invaded. We continue to engage
and work with numerous government agencies and non-governmental
organizations to achieve this mission."
Oxitec's pioneering biological method involves the release of
engineered, non-biting male mosquitoes that mate with wild
females. The resulting offspring inherit a self-limiting gene
preventing them from reaching adulthood and the males themselves
die within days providing an eco-friendly solution that solely
targets Aedes aegypti and does not persist in the
environment. Oxitec will utilize a portion of the new
facility's significant production capability to support its ongoing
deployment program in Piracicaba's downtown area and CECAP/Eldorado
district to suppress Aedes aegypti.
In conjunction with independent collaborators, Oxitec has
conducted five open field trials of its self-limiting mosquitoes in
Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands. Each
trial led to a greater than 90% reduction of the wild Aedes
aegypti population, achieving these unparalleled suppression
results within six months on average. More recently,
Piracicaba's Epidemiologic Surveillance service released data
showing the incidence of dengue had decreased by 91% to just 12
cases in the CECAP/Eldorado district where Friendly™ Aedes
mosquitoes were released, compared to a 52% reduction in the rest
of the city during the same 12-month period.
Notably the public support for the Friendly™ Aedes project has
been strong. A survey conducted by the CW7 Market Research
Institute in mid-2016 showed that 98% of Piracicaba's citizens
support the use of innovative tools to fight dengue, Zika and
chikungunya, and 88% support the use of Friendly™ Aedes.
"This Friendly™ Aedes facility increases our current production
capacity 30-fold in Brazil", says
Glen Slade, Oxitec's VP and Director
of Oxitec do Brasil. "This reaffirms our ability to produce
Friendly™ Aedes at scale, and we are ready to expand our production
even further to help protect the people of Brazil and beyond."
About Intrexon Corporation
Intrexon Corporation (NYSE:
XON) is Powering the Bioindustrial Revolution with Better
DNA™ to create biologically-based products that improve
the quality of life and the health of the planet. The
Company's integrated technology suite provides its partners across
diverse markets with industrial-scale design and development of
complex biological systems delivering unprecedented control,
quality, function, and performance of living cells. We call
our synthetic biology approach Better DNA®, and we
invite you to discover more at www.dna.com or follow us on Twitter
at @Intrexon.
Trademarks
Intrexon, Powering the Bioindustrial
Revolution with Better DNA, and Better DNA are trademarks of
Intrexon and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of
their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement
Some of the statements made in
this press release are forward-looking statements. These
forward-looking statements are based upon our current expectations
and projections about future events and generally relate to our
plans, objectives and expectations for the development of our
business. Although management believes that the plans and
objectives reflected in or suggested by these forward-looking
statements are reasonable, all forward-looking statements involve
risks and uncertainties and actual future results may be materially
different from the plans, objectives and expectations expressed in
this press release.
For more information contact:
Corporate
Contact:
Marie Rossi,
Ph.D.
Senior Manager, Technical Communications
Tel: +1 (301) 556-9850
publicrelations@intrexon.com
Investor Contact:
Christopher
Basta
Vice President, Investor Relations
Tel: +1 (561) 410-7052
investors@intrexon.com
Oxitec Contact:
Matthew
Warren
Press Officer
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 832 393
info@oxitec.com