Astorg Partners has signed an agreement with International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG) to acquire CDMO CordenPharma. According to French private equity firm Astorg, ICIG chose to sell contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) CordenPharma after a strategic portfolio review, which concluded its aim to focus more on its chemicals portfolio. Under the terms of the deal, ICIG  will reinvest as partners with Astorg to develop CDMO would further. “We look forward to having the opportunity to partner with ICIG and [CordenPharma’s]…

The aim of the collaboration is to support the expansion of Quell’s autologous T-regulatory (Treg) cell therapy pipeline using Cellistic’s knowledge of iPSC processes. Under the terms of the deal, Quell Therapeutics and human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology development and manufacturing firm Cellistic will take part in joint research to form a process for differentiating iPSCs into functional Treg cell therapy products. According to Quell, it will contribute its Treg expertise and technologies, as well as characterizing Treg…

Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies has won a $10.6 million contract from the US Government to continue freeze-dried plasma (FDP) development. Apheresis services firm Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies has entered into a contract with the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC), which is an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) with the US Army Medical Research and Development Command. In 2016, Terumo was awarded initial funding of $1.9 million (potential to be increased to $16 million) from the US Government to support…

NorthX has signed a partnership agreement to upscale and manufacture Abera Biosciences’ vaccine candidate against pneumococcus, Ab-01.12.   Abera is a vaccine and platform development company, which was founded in 2012 as a spinout from Swedish production firm Xbrane Bioscience. Its lead vaccine candidate Ab-01.12 is administered as a nasal spray and aims to treat pneumococcus using technology designed to protect against all variants of the bacterium. Abera is preparing the vaccine candidate for clinical trials in humans and has…

Regeneron will increase its research efforts in immuno-oncology through the all-cash acquisition of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals. Under the terms of the deal, Regeneron will buy Checkmate at an all-cash price of $10.50 per share of its common stock, which places the proposed acquisition at a total equity value of around $250 million. Checkmate is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm focused on developing technology to treat cancer. Its lead investigational candidate is an advanced generation CpG-A oligodeoxynucleotide Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) delivered in…

Ilya Pharma has acquired its long-term partner Nordic Bioanalysis, which it says will help them support the Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) space. The deal, of which no financial details have been disclosed, sees clinical stage immunotherapy firm Ilya Pharma acquire Nordic Bioanalysis (NBAB), which develops pharmaceuticals and biologics, including antibodies and ATMPs. “NBAB mainly provide bioanalytical services for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The advantages to Ilya Pharma are to de-risk our supply chain for CMC and clinical bioanalytics, the de-risking…

Resilience will make gene therapies for Opus; WuXi Advanced Therapies will make CAR-Ts for Chimeric; and Fujifilm will make RNA oncology candidates for Chimeron. First up in our roundup of advanced therapy contract manufacturing deals this week is Opus Genetics, which has struck a deal with (National) Resilience to support its pipeline of adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector-based gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases. The contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) will provide process and analytical development, quality control testing, and…