Deal-Making Archives - Page 56 of 59 - BioProcess InternationalBioProcess International

BioTime spinning out regenerative med firm AgeX

BioTime has received US$43 million (€37 million) from Juvenescence for a stake in AgeX and plans to spin the cell therapy subsidiary out in September. In April 2017, Californian late-stage biotech BioTime formed the subsidiary AgeX therapeutics to focus on its human aging candidates derived from regenerative stem cells. Earlier this year, fellow aging-focused firm Juvenescence made a $5 million investment in the subsidiary, and this week has upped its stake by 14.4 million shares paying BioTime $21.6 million in…

Sangamo Bets on CAR-Treg Through $84m TxCell Acquisition

by Dan Stanton

CAR-Treg is the next biology of interest for gene-modified cellular therapies says TxCell, which is set to be acquired by Sangamo Therapeutics. Sangamo Therapeutics has agreed to buy French biotech TxCell for approximately €72 million (US$84 million), bolstering its pipeline with cellular immunotherapies based on regulatory T lymphocytes, or Tregs. The acquisition will help bring candidates, including TX200 for transplant rejection, through the clinic and towards commercialization, TxCell’s CEO Stephane Boissel told Bioprocess Insider. “We did not want to start…

Danaher Praises Pall for Returning Biopharma to ‘High Growth Norm’

by Dan Stanton

Strong demand for single-use technologies has returned double-digit growth for Pall, contributing to a “return to normality” for Danaher Corporation’s life sciences business. For its second quarter 2018, Danaher Corporation reported total revenues across its life sciences businesses of US$1.6 billion (€1.4 billion), up 16% over the same period last year. The multinational attributed much of the growth to Pall Corporation – the filtration, separations and purification firm it acquired for $13.6 billion in 2015 – though CEO Tom Joyce…

Pluristem and Thermo Fisher Look to Plug Gaps in Cell Therapy Manufacture

by Dan Stanton

Pluristem and Thermo Fisher will work to address the lack of technologies available to cell therapy manufacturers for the cultivation and processing of allogeneic products. “There is a lack of technologies for the cultivation and processing of allogeneic products whose potential is high scale production,” Yaky Yanay, president and co-CEO of Pluristem Therapeutics told BioProcess Insider. “Some of the gaps are in the technology itself, some are in the quality or the availability of raw materials.” To minimize some of…

Sonnet Selects Oncobiologics to Take I-O Assets into the Clinic

by Dan Stanton

Sonnet BioTherapeutics has completed the discovery phase for its cytokine-based immunotherapy platform and begun a tech transfer to CDMO Oncobiologics. New Jersey-based biopharma firm Sonnet has announced it is planning to move its preclinical candidates towards the clinic, and has begun CMC development for up to four immuno-oncology candidates with a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). John Cini, co-founder and chief scientific office of Sonnet, told BioProcess Insider the CDMO is fellow New Jersey-based firm Oncobiologics, which will manufacture…

Difficult Q4 for Avid as it Pushes to Diversify Customers and Fill Capacity

by Dan Stanton

Avid Bioservices says it has worked aggressively to expand since becoming a pure-play CDMO but needs increased customer diversification and capacity utilization to secure future growth. After selling off its internal monoclonal antibody programs to Oncologie and dropping its Peregrine Pharmaceuticals tag, Avid Bioservices completed its transition to a pure contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). Six months on, the firm has reported a 62% year-on-year drop in its fourth quarter revenues to US$6.9 million (€5.9 million) and a fall…

French CDMO to Make Kymriah as Part of Novartis CAR-T Strategy

by Dan Stanton

Novartis has selected France-based CELLforCURE as a CAR-T therapy manufacturing partner fresh from receiving European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommendation for Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel). Kymriah became the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy to receive approval in the US last August. Last month, marketing authorization holder Novartis came one step closer to bringing the therapy to Europe after receiving positive opinion from the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP). In the wake of this recommendation, the Swiss…

Still Space for Multiple Neulasta Biosimilars, says Pfenex

by Dan Stanton

Pfenex has deprioritized its pegfilgrastim biosimilar program but is reevaluating the market after Mylan’s recent success in the US. In June, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Mylan’s Fulphilia on its second attempt. While Fulphilia has become the first biosimilar of Amgen’s cancer drug Neulasta (pegfilgrastim), there are several other firms looking to tap the market, including Coherus and Novartis subsidiary Sandoz. Clinical-stage development and licensing biotech Pfenex too has a pegfilgrastim biosimilar in its pipeline, PF529, but announced…

Entegris: ‘Flex Acquisition Helps Supply Chain Security’

by BPI Staff

Entegris has acquired Flex Concepts, adding upstream tech to its bioprocessing equipment offering. The deal – financial details of which have not been divulged – will see Entegris add bioprocessing single-use bags and fluid transfer solutions to its life sciences offering. “Flex Concepts manufactures quick turn custom configured products primarily for the biopharmaceutical industry. They sell products to some of the top pharma and biopharma companies,” Eric Isberg, director of Life Sciences for Entegris, told BioProcess Insider. “Flex had primarily…

Mustang Opens $7m CAR-T Manufacturing Plant

by Dan Stanton

Mustang Bio has opened a CAR-T cell manufacturing facility in Massachusetts it says has capacity to treat up to 800 patients annually. Fortress Biotech-owned Mustang has several chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies in its pipeline and has opened a facility in Worcester, Massachusetts to support their development. “Total investment into the facility, including the build out and equipment was between US$5 million (€4.3 million) and $7 million,” Mustang Bio’s chief technology officer Knut Niss told BioProcess Insider. The current…