Tuesday, June 2, 2020 Daily Archives

A Boulder move: AGC Biologics snaps up former AZ plant for $100m

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AGC Biologics has expanded its CDMO operations by acquiring a mothballed commercial-scale manufacturing facility from AstraZeneca and says it will hire 150 staff going forward. In January 2019, Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca announced the closure of two Colorado-based biomanufacturing facilities acquired in 2015 and 2016 from fellow pharma giant Amgen. The decision to close the sites in Longmont and Boulder formed part of a plan to consolidate its biologics manufacturing network into one large-scale drug substance facility at its site in…

June 2, 2020

Thermo Fisher adding 12,000L to bio-capacity with Swiss plant from CSL

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Thermo Fisher will take over operations at CSL’s biomanufacturing site in Lengnau – currently under construction – adding 12,000 L of stainless-steel bioreactor capacity to its CDMO network. CSL Behring broke ground on the 1.5 million square-foot site in Lengnau, near Bern in Switzerland back in 2015, with plans to use the facilities to manufacture recombinant products, specifically in its hematology pipeline. At the time, the firm, which invested approximately CHF 1 billion ($1 billion) into the project, said the…

June 2, 2020

Immobilize growth factors to cut cell therapy COGS say researchers

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Cell therapy manufacturing costs could be reduced dramatically using immobilized growth factors in culture according to research. Industry interest in cell therapies has increased significantly in recent years. According to a report by US industry group PhRMA, there are 362 cell and gene therapies in clinical development, up from 289 in 2018. The surge in cell therapies entering the clinic is the “result of years of pioneering research by America’s biopharmaceutical research companies,†according to PhRMA. It also reflects the…

June 2, 2020

Cytiva shares tips for viral vector production

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The viral vector market is highly active, and the interest in production technologies is driven by recent approvals in cell and gene therapy, says Ã…sa Hagner-McWhirter, senior scientist at Cytiva. Demand for viral vector production is high. The main driver is the large pipeline in different clinical stages and scales. In 2018 there were 724 clinical trials for gene therapies and gene-modified cell therapies, many of which use viral vectors. Adenoviruses and retroviruses, including lentivirus, are frequently used. Adeno-associated virus…

June 2, 2020