Cell therapy weekly: partnerships to enhance automated quality control
This week: FUJIFILM Biosciences (CA, USA) launched a new medium for gene therapy production, VintaBio (PA, USA) filed provisional patents for its novel biomanufacturing approach, and Cellares (CA, USA) announced five strategic partnerships to enhance its automated quality control testing platform.
The news highlights:
- FUJIFILM Biosciences launches BalanCD HEK293 Perfusion A Medium
- Patents filed for VintaBio’s manufacturing platform
- Five partnerships to advance Cell Q
FUJIFILM Biosciences launches BalanCD HEK293 Perfusion A Medium
FUJIFILM Biosciences has launched a new cell culture medium to strengthen and broaden the company’s range of solutions for gene therapy applications. BalanCD HEK293 Perfusion A supports high-density perfusion culture across various cell retention devices and transfection methods, accommodating both steady-state and intensified processes. By leveraging perfusion technology, it reduces capital costs for AAV and LV virus production while ensuring consistency and scalability for large-scale commercial manufacturing of advanced therapies.
“FUJIFILM Biosciences is committed to helping our partners bring innovative new treatments and therapies to more patients than ever before. With BalanCD HEK293 Perfusion A medium, we have introduced a new way to advance gene therapies, building on a family of purposely-designed, high performing HEK293 products to provide more consistent, high-quality resources across the treatment spectrum,” said Erik Vaessen, chief business officer, FUJIFILM Biosciences. “This innovative approach is another example on how we are customizing services, products, and systems to help all who bring therapeutics to more patients, as we continue to work on this mission together.”
Patents filed for VintaBio’s manufacturing platform
VintaBio has announced the filing of provisional patents with the US Patent Office for its approach to manufacturing biotherapeutics. The company’s innovation centers on using adherent culturing methods in a small-scale process that dramatically improves efficiency and scalability.
VintaBio has built upon existing adherent manufacturing methods currently used in FDA-approved gene therapies like Zolgensma and Luxturna, but with crucial improvements. Their purpose-built process addresses a major industry challenge by reducing the large operational footprints that typically restrict scalability. The company achieves this through proprietary technology, tools, and methods specifically designed for high-density culturing of adherent cells in a single-use benchtop bioreactor system.
VintaBio has already successfully demonstrated their technology’s effectiveness in producing AAV viral vector gene therapies using an HEK293 cell line for clients, with batch data showing greater than 60% full capsids at harvest and more than 95% at final purification. The total process recovery rate using their platform reaches approximately 60%, which represents exceptional efficiency in the field.
Five partnerships to advance Cell Q
Cellares has announced several strategic technology partnerships to enhance its Cell Q platform – the first fully automated quality control testing platform specifically designed for commercial-scale cell therapy manufacturing.
The Cell Q platform addresses a critical bottleneck in cell therapy production by automating labor-intensive, error-prone quality control processes. Unlike traditional manual QC methods that struggle with scale, a single Cell Q system can process up to 6,000 cell therapy batches annually, enabling true end-to-end manufacturing scalability.
Cellares has formed partnerships with industry leaders to strengthen the platform’s capabilities across multiple domains. These collaborations include Tecan (Männedorf, Switzerland) for liquid handling systems, Advanced Instruments (MA, USA) for verification and calibration, Cytek Biosciences (CA, USA) for flow cytometry workflows, Slingshot Biosciences (CA, USA) for synthetic controls, and AltemisLab (Cambridge, UK) for sample tracking and automated thawing.