Key wins in gene therapy applications helped deliver a record year for bioprocessing vendor Repligen.

For the full year 2018, Massachusetts-headquartered bioprocess technology firm Repligen Corporation reported sales of $194 million (€171 million), up 37% on the year prior.

And looking forward, CEO Tony Hunt said his firm is “well positioned to gain further market share, as the industry continues to pivot towards flexible solutions and continuous processing to manufacture the growing number of biological drugs including promising new entrance in gene therapy.”

Image: iStock/Ankabala

When questioned during a financial call on the importance of gene therapies, Hunt said it is a major opportunity for Repligen.

“As we began to pay a lot more attention to gene therapy over the last, say, 12 to 18 months, we are seeing demand for our pre-packed columns. We’re seeing demand for flat sheet cassettes. We’re seeing demand for our hollow fiber cartridges and our cross-flow system.”

He also noted the concentration of gene therapy companies in the northeast US, where Repligen is headquartered, and expects gene therapy firms will “be a good contributor to overall revenue and overall revenue growth for us for the foreseeable future,” he said.

“We’ve just focused on the products we have, which is really our OPUS pre-packed columns, flat sheet cassettes and our hollow fiber products,” Hunt continued, adding that because those products have been proven in the monoclonal antibody space, and because of the firm’s good relationships with CDMOs and end-users, Repligen has been able to bring its products to gene therapy “in a fairly easy way.”

Fellow bioprocessing vendors have also been pushing their offerings to the burgeoning gene therapy industry, something Hunt acknowledged.

“I think almost everybody in the bioprocessing space is focused on gene therapy, whether it’s GE or Thermo or Sartorius or Pall or Millipore. Everybody has a portfolio of products that they feel can be used and applied into the gene therapy space,” he said. “So everybody in our space is definitely competing, and all our competitors are also focused on gene therapy. So no surprise.”