Over 20 cell and gene-based therapies are expected to be filed or to receive approval decisions over the next 18 months, according to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM). Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laid out its action plan to deal with the large upswing in the number of investigational new drug (IND) applications for cell and gene therapies it is receiving. “The FDA commissioner has anticipated that he thinks there will be between 10-20…
CAR-T pioneer Kite Pharma says scaling out capabilities, embracing digital technologies, and industry collaboration are among the efforts needed to bring cell therapies to maturity. In 2017, Gilead company Kite Pharma became the second company to achieve US regulatory success for a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Two years on, and while sales of the product Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) are rising – Q2 2019 saw a 25% quarterly growth to $120 million –the sector itself has somewhat stalled with…
Treefrog Therapeutics has received €10 million ($11 million) over the past five months to support its mass-produced pluripotent stem cell platform C-Stem. In September, Bordeaux, France-based Treefrog Therapeutics received €450,000 from the French government and €2.4 million from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program to help acelerate the cGMP certification and scale-up of its C-Stem technology platform. It comes five months after the firm raised €7 million in a Series A funding. “C-Stem is a technology that enables the mass-production of…