Bio-Techne Corporation, Wilson Wolf Manufacturing, and CellReady announced the first recipient of the G-Rex Grant through their ScaleReady joint venture platform. The $300,000 grant was awarded to Steve Feldman, scientific director and site head of Stanford Medicine’s Laboratory for Cell and Gene Medicine (LCGM). It will support development of the LCGM’s G-Rex platform for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy manufacturing.

The G-Rex Grant is a $20 million initiative conceived to support the advancement of cell and gene (CGT) development and manufacturing, helping companies to establish current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) processes. To be eligible for a grant, parties that apply must have or be working toward an investigational new drug (IND) application. They also must be engaged in research and development (R&D) of CGTs.  

Grant recipients will gain the supplies and support needed to aid their projects, which may include G-Rex bioreactors, harvest pumps, and well plates from Wilson Wolf; reagents, cell culture media, and a TcBuster transposon/transposase system from Bio-Techne; and various supports and services from ScaleReady and CellReady. Each recipient will receive between $5000 and $300,000 in materials and support from the grant.

Grant winners also receive access to exclusive discounts from a list of industry suppliers including Thermo Fisher Scientific, Charles River Laboratories, and Fresenius Kabi, one of the three companies that partnered to form ScaleReady along with Bio-Techne and Wilson Wolf.

Feldman’s team at the Stanford Medicine LCGM will use G-Rex technologies in its manufacturing process for an upcoming Phase I trial for GPC2 pediatric neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma. Stanford Medicine LCGM plans to implement Bio-Techne's Ella multiplexing immunoassay platform as a potency assay for final drug product release. 

"Stanford's LCGM anticipates a need to support a greater number of clinical trials and the G-Rex Grant will be used to help meet that need," Feldman said.

"We are honored to award the inaugural G-Rex Grant to Dr. Feldman and his team at Stanford Medicine LCGM. Stanford University is a world-class institution with faculty who have a reputation for innovative and ground-breaking achievements," said John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Wolf.