Landmark Bio opens advanced therapy manufacturing plant in MA

Academia-industry joint venture firm Landmark Bio says the recently opened Watertown, Massachusetts facility offers a one-stop-shop for manufacturing solutions.

Harvard University, MIT, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and Cytiva – the founders of Landmark Bio – collectively invested $75 million to support construction staff and early client services for the 44,000 square-foot Watertown facility that will carry out development, manufacturing, and testing of cell and gene therapies in the area.

Other collaborating institutions include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“There is a significant growth in cell and gene therapy in the past few years,” Ran Zheng, CEO of Landmark Bio told BioProcess Insider.

DepositPhotos/AllaSerebrina

“The desire to move groundbreaking research to clinic rapid drives the need for enabling capabilities and talent Landmark Bio fills a niche in the earliest phases of development that has typically not been served by traditional contract development manufacturing organizations’ (CDMOs).”

In total, the facility consists of eight clean rooms for cell therapies, messenger RNA (mRNA), lipid nanoparticle production (LNP), genome editing, as well as carrying out fill and finish and quality control testing. The site also contains laboratory space early development, translational research, process and analytical development, and technology innovation.

“Landmark Bio is positioned as a technology partner to enable therapeutic translation with a line of sight to commercialization,” said Zheng.

“We take on unique and novel modalities with ‘never done before’ processes, and develop, apply, and integrate manufacturing technologies to manufacture transformative advanced therapy products. We create the platforms of tomorrow to enable next gen genomic medicine.”

Landmark Bio also says that the site provides other services such as drug development, regulatory consulting, program management, and other support services. Furthermore, the company anticipates that it will grow from 60 employees to over 100 members of staff in the coming years.

“Watertown is an emerging life sciences hub within the greater Boston/Cambridge life science ecosystem with close proximity to leading universities, research hospitals, industry powerhouses, start-ups, and venture companies all directed at providing therapies to patients near and far,” Zheng told us.