Cincinnati plays host to new cell, viral vector manufacturing site from Expression Therapeutics

Mohan Rao, Expression Therapeutics CEO

Ex­pres­sion Ther­a­peu­tics’ new cell and vi­ral vec­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing site is up and run­ning in Cincin­nati.

The 43,000 square-foot site will pro­vide end-to-end R&D ca­pa­bil­i­ties and both ear­ly phase- and com­mer­cial-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing of lentivi­ral and ade­no-as­so­ci­at­ed vi­ral vec­tors. The site will have a mix of 30-180 liter runs in cell stacks and up to 1,000 liter runs in biore­ac­tors, with the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture up to 100 prod­ucts per year. It al­so gives the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture to ful­fill its ex vi­vo cell pro­cess­ing, and re­com­bi­nant pro­tein pro­duc­tion needs.

The open­ing of the site al­lowed for three full-scale runs of Ex­pres­sion’s lead can­di­date, ET-206, to treat neu­rob­las­toma, a dis­ease in which ma­lig­nant can­cer forms in neu­rob­lasts in the adren­al glands, neck, chest or spinal cord.

‘With GMP vec­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing back­logs typ­i­cal­ly ex­ceed­ing 18 months, we want­ed to bring in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties on­line and pro­vide CD­MO ser­vices to com­mer­cial clients as soon as pos­si­ble,’ pres­i­dent Bill Swaney said in a state­ment.

The an­nounce­ment comes just days af­ter Cincin­nati Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal and CTI Clin­i­cal Tri­al & Con­sult­ing Ser­vices en­tered a $100 mil­lion agree­ment to pro­duce clin­i­cal ma­te­r­i­al lo­cal­ly. That agree­ment is geared to­ward ad­dress­ing the glob­al gene and cell ther­a­py short­age and prepar­ing for the on­slaught of ap­provals that are ex­pect­ed by 2025. That project will cre­ate about 150 new jobs are ex­pect­ed to be cre­at­ed and take steps to­ward build­ing the re­gion’s rep­u­ta­tion as a re­search hub.

Swaney came to Ex­pres­sion from Cincin­nati Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal Med­ical Cen­ter where he was the di­rec­tor of the vec­tor pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty. Ex­pres­sion is based out of both At­lanta and Cincin­nati, and its pipeline fea­tures gene ther­a­pies for he­mo­phil­ia, T-cell leukemia/lym­phoma, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and pri­ma­ry im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cies such as he­mo­phago­cyt­ic lym­pho­his­ti­o­cy­to­sis.

‘The open­ing of our man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty sig­nals our com­mit­ment to strength­en south­west Ohio’s po­si­tion as an emerg­ing lo­ca­tion for biotech­nol­o­gy while al­so rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing our in­ter­nal ther­a­peu­tic pipeline through clin­i­cal tri­als and com­mer­cial­iza­tion,’ said CEO Mo­han Rao.

Ed­i­tor’s Note: For more news and ex­clu­sive cov­er­age from the man­u­fac­tur­ing beat, sub­scribe to the End­points Man­u­fac­tur­ing week­ly re­port in your read­er pro­file.

CALQUENCE is a registered trademark of the AstraZeneca group of companies.

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