Cell and gene therapy developers need staff with skills according to McKinsey & Company, which says making such therapies is laborious, complex, and expensive and few firms are ready to take on these challenges. The management consulting group wrote about the burgeoning cell and gene therapy industry in a blog post this month, writing that as more cell and gene therapies come to market industry will need to invest in skills. “Five years ago, these treatments were really just ideas…
Alder Therapeutics will help CDMO NorthX expand its services into pluripotent stem cells and help to design and validate process development and GMP-manufacturing labs in Sweden. Investor group Flerie launched contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) NorthX Biologics in 2021, through the acquisition of a former-Cognate plant in Matfors, Sweden from Charles River Laboratories. The entity has focused on providing plasmid DNA and technical protein production at commercial scale but is now expanding into cell therapy services, establishing GMP-manufacturing labs…
J&J and Bristol-Myers Squibb have spoken of plans to increase supply of lentivirus as they continue to roll out their respective CAR-T therapies. Bristol-Myers Squibb, meanwhile, achieved commercial chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) success in early 2021 with the approval of both Breyanzi (liso-cel) – which last week was granted second-line approval for relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – and Abecma (ide-cel) for multiple Myeloma. In March 2022, the FDA…
invoX Pharma, a Sino Biopharm subsidiary, will pay $161 million to acquire F-Star, a Cambridge, UK clinical stage company developing bispecific drugs for immunotherapies. F-star’s platform technology pioneers the use of tetravalent (2+2) bispecific antibodies. These antibodies target two different antigens and are paired with a unique set of pharmacology agents to activate an immune reaction in the tumor microenvironment. F-Star has four candidates in clinical trials, three from its tetravalent platform and one next-gen STING agonist. invoX, located in…