Cell therapy weekly: partnerships for advancing cell and gene therapies

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This week: Partnerships to advance cell and gene therapies have been announced, focusing on three key areas: developing gene therapies, enhancing cell and gene therapy manufacturing and developing treatments for difficult-to-treat conditions.
The news highlights:Centers of excellence for gene therapy research
Advancing cell and gene therapy manufacturing
Developing therapies for difficult-to-treat conditions
Centers of excellence for gene therapy research

The Medical Research Centre (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI; both Swindon, UK) is establishing two Centers of Research Excellence (CoRE) to advance therapies for untreatable diseases, each receiving up to roughly US$64 million over 14 years aiming to transform treatments for diseases such as heart disease, immune disorders and neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s disease.

Oxford University (UK) will lead the MRC/BHF CoRE in Advanced Cardiac Therapies, which will be co-funded with the British Heart Foundation (London, UK) to develop gene therapies for heart diseases. Meanwhile, the second center, the MRC CoRE in Therapeutic Genomics, will target rare genetic disorders, developing scalable methods to adapt successful genetic therapies, while leveraging artificial intelligence to analyze mass patient genetic data.

Patrick Chinnery, Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council, said: “The MRC CoREs are a new way of funding bold and ambitious science that seeks to advance our ability to understand diseases, diagnose them at an early stage, intervene with new treatments and prevent diseases of the future…These two CoREs aim to bring these burgeoning technologies to mass fruition to treat many devastating diseases which will also lead to economic growth.”


Advancing manufacturing of cell and gene therapies

Ori Biotech (London, UK) and Fresenius Kabi (Bad Homburg, Germany) have partnered to advance modular, scalable manufacturing of cell and gene therapies. This collaboration will integrate Ori Biotech’s IRO® platform with Fresenius Kabi’s processing technologies, aiming to deliver an efficient and closed workflow, while reducing barriers and helping bring cell and gene therapies to market faster and more efficiently.

“Our collaboration with Ori Biotech allows us to integrate their innovative IRO platform with our systems, supporting our partners’ goal of delivering life-saving cell and gene therapies to patients as quickly and consistently as possible,” commented Christian Hauer, President of MedTech at Fresenius Kabi.


Developing therapies for difficult-to-treat conditions

Cimeio Therapeutics (MA, USA) is collaborating with Kyowa Kirin (Tokyo, Japan) to develop cell therapies in an estimated US$300 million deal. Combining Cimeio’s proprietary Shielded-Cell & Immunotherapy Pairs™ (SCIP) platform with Kyowa Kirin’s expertise in cellular therapies, the companies hope to improve therapeutics for patients with unmet needs.

“Kyowa Kirin and Cimeio share the vision for the potential of therapeutics enabled by epitope-shielded cells,” said Yoshifumi Torii, Executive Officer, Senior Vice President and Head of Research Division of Kyowa Kirin. “With this partnership, we believe we can develop a safe and effective therapy for diseases that in the past have been incredibly difficult to treat and we’re looking forward to working with the talented team at Cimeio.”



Event : International Top Pharmaceutical Awards 


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