The advanced therapy pipeline is driving demand says Avantor, which has collaborated with Cytovance to offer an expanded plasmid DNA service. 

“The demand for plasmid DNA, especially at cGMP-grade, supporting advanced therapeutic modalities is growing rapidly,” said Ger Brophy, EVP of Biopharma Production at Avantor. 

He told BioProcess Insider it is being driven by the growing, early-stage pipeline of cell and gene therapies, DNA and RNA vaccines, and gene editing technologies. “We estimate that the total addressable market for plasmid DNA is approximately $1.5 billion across all modalities.”

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As such, Avantor has entered a collaboration aimed at accelerating its plasmid optimization and sourcing services by providing GMP and non-GMP grade products manufactured at Cytovance Biologics’ campus in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 

“Avantor customers that are developing cell and gene therapies as well as nucleic acid-based vaccines will be able to optimize and scale their plasmid DNA templates to GMP grade at production scale through this collaboration,” Brophy said. 

“Biopharma customers will be able to source GMP plasmids along with other critical materials through Avantor as well as access the deep process development knowledge of the combined commercial teams. Additionally, Cytovance will continue to expand its commercial reach through this collaboration.” 

He added that the collaboration, financial details of which have not been divulged, can help customers “accelerate their development timelines to manufacture clinical batches more quickly and ultimately bring these innovative life-changing therapies to market sooner.” 

The collaboration is not a precursor to anything more formal between the two companies, we were told.  

“The focus of our collaboration with Cytovance is to expand our offering to global biopharma customers and specifically access to plasmid DNA. This is about our commitment to cell and gene therapy biomanufacturers.”