Cytiva and Bayer signed a multi-year development agreement to jointly develop the first modular end-to-end manufacturing platform for allogeneic cell therapies.
According to Jens Vogel, PhD, senior vice president and global head of biotech, Bayer Pharmaceuticals Product Supply, “Through our collaboration with Cytiva, we plan to realize a uniquely flexible, modular, cell therapy manufacturing platform capable to rapidly ‘industrialize’ a broad range of cell therapies, thereby creating efficiency, standardization/ and economies of scale.”
“Collaborations are key to advancing and accelerating the development of novel therapeutics and ultimately helping improve patients’ lives,” added Catarina Flyborg, vice president, cell and gene therapy, Cytiva. “Cytiva has a strong history as a leader in therapeutic manufacturing technologies and our collaboration with Bayer and their deep expertise in cell therapy development will enable us to create a new generation of manufacturing solutions specifically designed to meet the developing needs of allogeneic cell therapy.”
The companies say they share the same conceptual vision for an automated and modular allogenic cell therapy manufacturing platform. They believe this work will help establish new industry standards for manufacturing.
Success of the Bayer-Cytiva collaboration rests with the companies’ plans to design innovative equipment and automation solutions with allogenic cell therapy in mind from the start. They plan to develop equipment and software concurrently with a focus on manufacturing speed, flexibility and a robust “plug and play” operating environment. The end goal is rapid speed to market and cost-efficient use of manufacturing infrastructure through modular design of equipment and processes.
Both parties will provide personnel, resources, and facilities to work on the joint development program. Bayer’s road map for allogeneic cell therapy manufacturing technology will be leveraged, and its development product portfolio will be among the product candidates used to support proof of concept testing of the technologies.
Cytiva will utilize its equipment and consumable manufacturing expertise and technology roadmap to design the new platforms, and when complete, will make them commercially available.
In February, Cytiva reported that it would collaborate with NecstGen on the development of cell and gene therapies.
