Submitted
2025 Global Health Challenge
SILKVAX
Team Leader
Anthony Pilorget
NEVEZYNE has developed a new way of vaccine and biologic medicine manufacturing by using silkworms instead of traditional cell-based systems. Its platform employs optimized silkworms to yield high-quality proteins for use in vaccines and treatments.
What is it?
It's a bioproduction platform that leverages silkworms as natural biofactories for the production of complex proteins, including those used in vaccines and...
What is the name of your organization?
NEVEZYNE
What is the name of your solution?
SILKVAX
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
NEVEZYNE pioneers silkworm-based bioproduction, offering a scalable, cost-effective, and sustainable platform for vaccine manufacturing.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Ploufragan, France
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
FRA
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
NEVEZYNE is tackling the urgent demand for low-cost, scalable, and quick vaccines and biologics production. Conventional systems of production, especially mammalian cell culture-based systems, are costly, complicated, and resource-heavy and are typically accompanied by massive infrastructure and long development lead times. This handicaps the ability of the world to react quickly to emerging infectious diseases and makes vaccines out of reach in low- and middle-income nations.
NEVEZYNE's novel silkworm-based platform addresses these issues through optimized silkworm strains to deliver high-quality protein-based vaccines with efficiency. The method is scalable by nature, wherein cycles of production are far shorter and economical compared to conventional ones. It uses 90% less water and energy, lowering the environmental impact of biologics production.
Through its agile and quick-response manufacturing platform, NEVEZYNE accelerates vaccine and biologic development for pandemic preparedness, orphan diseases, and personalized medicine. NEVEZYNE is specifically optimized for companies that desire to decentralize biomanufacturing and create localized manufacturing facilities. Through this, NEVEZYNE not only revolutionizes biopharmaceutical manufacturing but also positively affects the global health equity by universalizing access to life-saving biologics and vaccines and reducing their costs globally.
What is your solution?
NEVEZYNE has developed a new way of vaccine and biologic medicine manufacturing by using silkworms instead of traditional cell-based systems. Its platform employs optimized silkworms to yield high-quality proteins for use in vaccines and treatments.
What is it?
It's a bioproduction platform that leverages silkworms as natural biofactories for the production of complex proteins, including those used in vaccines and biologics.
What does it do?
NEVEZYNE's method speeds up vaccine and biologic production to make them cheaper, quicker, and more environmentally friendly than conventional methods using mammalian cell culture. It enables a rapid response to emerging diseases and is cost-saving, so life-saving drugs become more accessible.
How?
- A particular baculovirus (insect virus) infects silkworms.
- The virus contains the genetic blueprint to express a specific target protein (e.g., vaccine antigen).
- The cells of the silkworms are natural factories, which make lots of desired protein.
- The proteins are removed and purified for application in vaccines or biologic drugs.
What technology does it use?
NEVEZYNE combines superior wild-type silkworm strain, genetically modified baculovirus expression system, and novel bioprocessing technology for high-quality, large-scale, and low-cost production.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
NEVEZYNE operations have direct impact on the populations of the LMICs, whose access to lifesaving biologic medicines and vaccines is normally blocked by cost, trouble in manufacture, and supply chain constraint. These nations' populations tend to lag in obtaining emerging infectious disease vaccines because manufacture is greatly concentrated within the high-income countries.
The traditional model of vaccine and biologic production is currently mammalian cell culture-based, costly, hard to scale up, and enormous in terms of infrastructure. This constrains local capacity and compels LMICs to import foreign vaccines and biologic products, typically leading to shortages and inequitable distribution.
NEVEZYNE's silkworm-based manufacturing platform solves these challenges with a decentralized, low-cost, and scalable solution. Low production costs and reduced environmental footprint make this technology allow local biomanufacturing in resource-limited environments, enhancing affordability and supply security. This technology also shortens response times to outbreaks, allowing populations in LMICs to be protected from new diseases in a timely manner.
By revolutionizing the production of vaccines and biologics, NEVEZYNE's solution enables LMICs to produce, manufacture, and distribute critical medicines, thus enhancing health outcomes and curtailing international healthcare inequalities.
Solution Team:

Anthony Pilorget
Team leader
Team leader
Christophe Loizel
CEO
CEO