nothin Way Paved For Anti-Malaria Clinical Trials | New Haven Independent

Way Paved For Anti-Malaria Clinical Trials

American Cell Technologies

Inside an ACT lab.

A tractor-trailer truck will deliver a mobile clean room” soon for a now-empty courtyard in Science Park, as part of a quest to develop new lifesaving vaccine.

The City Plan Commission (CPC) last week unanimously approved a site plan that will now permit ACT to install the mobile clean room.

In the clean room, Artificial Cell Technologies, Inc. (ACT), a company hatched in 2006, will begin testing of what might become a breakthrough vaccine to conquer malaria, one of the diseases that remains a scourge of the developing world.

The purpose of the room is to make possible a temporary pharmaceutical compounding laboratory for the production of ACT’s new synthetic malaria vaccine in a sterile environment for human clinical trials,” according the CPC staff report, which urged approval of ACT’s plans. The company develops drugs based on proprietary multilayer polypeptide nanofilm technology.

Allan Appel Photo

The courtyard.

The mobile clean room will arrive on a 55-foot-long trailer and park in the middle of the courtyard, which is unused at present and backs out onto Winchester Avenue. The plan is to have it stay a minimum of six months and up to a maximum of two years.

If it’s temporary, why are we hearing it?” CPC Chairman Ed Mattison asked.

City Plan Executive Director Karyn Gilvarg explained that Science Park’s Planned Development District rules include no provision for a temporary structure.

The commissioners elicited that the drug trials taking place within the mobile clean room will involve no toxic materials and that the only hook-up to services at 5 Science Park will involve installation of a 220-volt electrical panel to power the unit’s electrical and electronic systems.

The unit would not hook up to the building’s sewer system. It relies on clean water delivered by truck and gray waste water removal also by truck.

City Engineer Zinn, in blue, and commissioners review the ACT plans.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn and Commissioner Maricel Ramos-Valcarel elicited that the turnaround room and narrow entrance and egress to the courtyard off of Winchester are adequate.

Michael Pinto, an attorney representing Science Park, said that the rented sterile environment is more desirable that ACT’s adding a dedicated structure within their rented space.

The company anticipates a 180-day sojourn for the self-contained clean room during which time ACT will utilize the mobile facility in preparing for human clinical trials for a malaria vaccine,” Pinto added.

Several calls to ACT scientists to explain what precisely will be going on in the clean room during the anticipated six-month period were not returned by press time.

After the unanimous vote for approval Gilvarg asked the proposers, technically the Science Park Development Corporation, to state to us that DEEP [state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection] is OK with this proposal.”

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