Tuesday, November 3, 2020 Daily Archives

Novavax adds inhouse capacity to bolster COVID-19 and flu vaccines

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COVID-19 vaccine developer Novavax has secured two facilities in Maryland to support ongoing trials and scaled-up production. The first facility is a 122,000 square-foot plant in Gaithersburg, Maryland secured through a 15-year lease that will be built out and used for manufacturing, R&D, and offices from early 2021. It is located within a mile of Novavax’s headquarters. The second, also in Gaithersburg, is an 9.7-acre parcel of land acquired by Novavax for future development. The two sites will support Novavax’s…

November 3, 2020

ELEVECTA – The future of AAV gene therapy vector production

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Pharmaceutical companies with gene therapies in their pipeline need to establish scalable production processes that can keep up with the increasing demand in terms of volume, quality and robustness, says CEVEC. Gene therapies are seen as one of the most promising approach to treat life-threatening diseases with no therapeutic options and high medical needs.  In addition, gene therapies are now advancing also into indications with larger numbers of patients, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, thereby dramatically increasing the demand for viral…

November 3, 2020

CRISPR, reagents, cell lines: PerkinElmer buying Horizon Discovery

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PerkinElmer will buy Horizon Discovery Group for $383 million to add CRISPR gene editing and RNAi tech to its offering. As well as gene editing, the deal will also add Horizon’s reference standards, screening technologies and manufacturing cell lines to PerkinElmer’s portfolio. Buying Horizon will enable PerkinElmer to better address market needs says Alan Fletcher, vice president and general manager of life sciences. “A combined PerkinElmer Horizon offering positions the Combined Group as a provider of complete workflows for researchers…

November 3, 2020

COVID highlighting advantage of in-house CAR-T manufacturing, says Celyad

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With COVID-19 disrupting the supply chain, the advantages of inhouse manufacturing capabilities have never been so clear says CAR-T developer Celyad Oncology. In 2012, Celyad Oncology – then known as Cardio3 BioSciences – received GMP certification for its a facility in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium to support its allogeneic and autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T candidates. Eight years on and in the midst of a pandemic, the decision to invest in internal manufacturing capabilities has never seemed so astute, says Celyad’s…

November 3, 2020