Cell therapy weekly: Kite’s viral vector manufacturing facility receives FDA approval to produce commercial products
This week: Cytiva acquires CEVEC to strengthen cell line development, Kite’s viral vector manufacturing facility receives FDA approval to produce commercial products, and Rejuvenate Bio expands scientific advisory board.
The news highlights:
Cytiva acquires CEVEC Pharmaceuticals
Global life sciences leader, Cytiva (MA, USA), has acquired CEVEC Pharmaceuticals (Köln, Germany), a supplier of high-performance cell line development and viral vector manufacturing technologies. CEVEC’s 26 scientific experts join the Cytiva team immediately and CEVEC’s products, services and technologies will continue to be available to customers worldwide.
Emmanuel Abate, President of Genomic Medicine at Cytiva, says: “CEVEC’s innovative technology complements Cytiva’s offering and brings the promise of improved viral vector manufacturing. With Cytiva’s global reach and ability to scale, more customers will have access to CEVECS’s technology and expertise to help accelerate and advance therapeutics for the benefit of patients.”
Kite’s viral vector manufacturing facility receives FDA approval to produce commercial products
Kite Pharma (CA, USA), a Gilead company, who’s goal is to develop cell therapies to treat and cure cancer, has received FDA approval for its commercial retroviral vector manufacturing facility in Oceanside, California to produce commercial products. Kite is the only cell therapy company with in-house commercial and clinical trial viral vector manufacturing capabilities.
Kite’s Global Head of Technical Operations, Chris McDonald, stated: “The cell therapy manufacturing process is complex and requires specific materials, including viral vectors that play a critical role in engineering a patient’s own T-cells to recognize and attack their cancer. The certainty of timely and dependable viral vector production supplied by our own facility provides an additional level of control essential for reliably delivering CAR-T cell therapy on a large commercial scale as well as providing supply for clinical trials to develop future treatments.”
Rejuvenate Bio expands scientific advisory board
Rejuvenate Bio (CA, USA), a spinout from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (MA, USA) utilizing gene therapies for the treatment of age-related diseases, has appointed three new members to its scientific advisory board, welcoming Hugh Calkins, Stephen Chelko and Elif Oral.
Daniel Oliver, CEO and Co-Founder of Rejuvenate Bio stated: “We are pleased to welcome Hugh, Stephen and Elif, who are renowned experts in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, and familial partial lipodystrophy to Rejuvenate’s scientific advisory board. This depth of scientific expertise will be critical in advancing our pipeline of novel gene therapies that target key drivers of diseases in cardiology, endocrinology and other chronic disease populations.”
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