December 6, 2021
Resilience has bought cell-free protein synthesis tech firm SwiftScale Biologics in a deal designed to support novel therapeutic research.
The San Diego based contractor – officially called National Resilience – announced the acquisition late last week, citing growing biopharmaceutical industry interest in cell-free protein synthesis as the prompt for the deal.
Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi suggested the approach could help industry overcome some of the hurdles that complicate commercial manufacture and scale-up.
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“Biologics production today is limited to what can be produced inside a host cell, a process that’s slow, unpredictable and hard to scale.
“By developing cell-free protein synthesis technology, we aim to make it easier for researchers to explore new kinds of therapies much faster and with more predictability than possible with today’s methods” Singhvi said.
According to Resilience, CFPS eliminates the constraints of using living cells in the drug manufacturing process, resulting in faster production times, less variability across batches and greater scalability with hard-to-produce proteins.
South San Francisco, California-based SwiftScale was founded by Michael Jewett, from Northwestern University, and Matthew DeLisa, from Cornell University.
The SwiftScale team, including leaders David Mace and Weston Kightlinger, will join Resilience.
The deal is in keeping with the strategy Singhvi outlined in May, when he said biopharmaceutical companies need to invest in innovative technologies to overcome the production bottlenecks that hamstring the industry.
The acquisition is the latest in a string of deals for Resilience since it was founded in 2020. These include the CDMO assets of Therapure, and a Boston, Massachusetts plant from Sanofi-Genzyme.
More recently it bought contract manufacturer Ology Bioservices in a deal that included a multi-purpose, multi-product facility in Alachua, Florida.
The Swiftscale takeover comes just days after Resilience teamed with Harvard University to establish a five-year research and development alliance.
The deal – which includes a $30 million commitment from Resilience for the development of complex medicines, including biologics, vaccines, nucleic acids and cell and gene therapies – will focus on efforts to “advance the manufacture of complex medicines.”
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