Inceptor snaps up Arranta plant in Florida

Inceptor Bio has acquired a clinical manufacturing plant in Gainesville from Arranta Bio to support trials of its cell therapy pipeline.

The 29,000 square-foot facility will be used as a base for Inceptor’s Advanced Manufacturing Platform (AMP), a scalable shared production infrastructure used to produce a pipeline of cell therapy candidates for the firm and its subsidiaries.

“We are thrilled to welcome the experienced, talented operating team from Arranta and look forward to establishing cell therapy GMP clinical manufacturing as a key strategic capability,” Shailesh Maingi, CEO of Inceptor Bio said.

The Gainesville, FL facility. Image c/o Arranta

“This acquisition accelerates Inceptor Bio’s path to the clinic for our CAR-T, CAR-M and CAR-NK programs with our lead CAR-T candidate scheduled for IND in early 2023.”

For Arranta, a microbiome and advanced therapy CDMO founded in 2019 by industry stalwart Mark Bamforth, the sale marks a full move to Massachusetts.

The firm’s 70,000 square-foot plant in Watertown boasts a range of fermenters up to 2,000 L scale for the manufacture of live biotherapeutic products (LBPs) and is being expanded to establish messenger RNA vaccine capabilities and critical starting material manufacture.

Arranta has also secured planning permission for a second MA plant in Boxborough, set to be completed by mid-2022.

“With over 200,000 square-foot of facilities in Watertown and Boxborough and over $150 million committed to building state-of-the-art facilities, Arranta has the capacity to respond to client needs for complex biopharmaceutical products that will change the lives of patients,”  said David Stevens, COO at Arranta.

And in LBP-related news, List Therapeutics has invested over $125 million in a site in Indiana, US to increase manufacturing capacity for its customers’ live biotherapeutics products.