Freiburg, Germany and London, UK, May 13, 2020 – Ori Biotech Ltd, (Ori), an innovator in cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing and CellGenix GmbH, a leading global supplier of high quality raw and ancillary materials for CGT and regenerative medicine, announced today a non-exclusive strategic partnership to achieve closed-system preparation, formulation and addition of CellGenix media and growth factors within CGT manufacturing for users of the Ori platform.
The Ori platform enables therapy developers and contract manufacturers to achieve more automated, more efficient CGT manufacturing in a closed system. Utilizing innovations from both Ori and CellGenix, users of the Ori manufacturing platform can eliminate process bottlenecks and open steps in media and growth factor formulation, preparation and transfers in order to enable higher throughput and reduced costs by eliminating manual handling steps. Ori selected CellGenix’ raw material portfolio as a partner because of its high quality standards and over 25 years of experience. CellGenix are experts in GMP manufacturing of raw materials which offer the highest quality and safety.
“Ori Biotech is continuing to build partnerships with best-in-class experts across the cell and gene therapy ecosystem to help enable our vision of integrated, closed system manufacturing,” said Farlan Veraitch, Co-Founder and CSO, Ori Biotech. “Innovation around the integration of high-quality materials from CellGenix into the Ori full-stack platform is another step toward enabling our customers to have a fully-closed manufacturing process from end-to-end, removing bottlenecks in formulation, preparation and process flow.”
“We are always interested in bringing the CGT industry forward by exploring innovative solutions that help simplify the production process as well as reduce the costs of goods”, said Felicia M. Rosenthal, CEO, CellGenix. “In addition to developing and producing our widely used raw materials and proprietary media solutions, we are building partnerships with companies developing next generation automated cell and gene therapy manufacturing platforms like Ori Biotech.” Till Puschmann, VP R&D and Business Development, CellGenix added “Through this collaboration our two companies will be able to offer our joint customers an innovative closed-system manufacturing platform including the necessary high-quality raw materials.”
“Through our ecosystem partnerships, we hope to provide our customers with integrated solutions that take some of the hassles out of their supply chain and manufacturing processes to allow them to focus on what they do best, delivering life-saving treatments to the patients who need them,” added Jason C. Foster, CEO, Ori Biotech.
About CellGenix
CellGenix is a leading global supplier of high quality raw and ancillary materials for the expanding market of cell and gene therapy and regenerative medicine. CellGenix develops, manufactures and markets human cytokines, growth factors, and other recombinant cell culture components in preclinical and GMP quality as well as proprietary serum-free media for further manufacturing of ATMPs. As an ATMP developer and manufacturer, CellGenix gained in-depth cell culture knowledge and superior regulatory expertize. With this unique background, CellGenix understands the high requirements their customers face during product development and the regulatory approval process. To meet the increasing demand for GMP quality raw materials for ATMP manufacturing CellGenix has recently expanded manufacturing capacity, built additional R&D and QC laboratories, and warehouse space. The upgrade also introduced state-of-the-art, automated, large-scale capacities for recombinant protein products in the existing GMP facilities. CellGenix is headquartered in Freiburg, Germany and operates a subsidiary near Boston in Portsmouth, USA.
About Ori Biotech
Ori Biotech is a London- and Philadelphia-based CGT manufacturing technology company. Ori has developed a proprietary, flexible manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes manufacturing allowing therapeutics developers to further develop and bring their products from pre-clinical process development to commercial scale manufacturing. The mission of the Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality and decrease costs in order to enable patient access to this new generation of lifesaving treatments. Founded by Dr Farlan Veraitch and Prof Chris Mason in 2015, the Company has brought together a seasoned Board and executive management team with over 80 years of pharmaceutical, cell therapy and venture building experience including CEO Jason C. Foster (Indivior) and CBO Jason Jones (Miltenyi Biotec) alongside industry-leading expert advisors like Bruce Levine, Anthony Davies and Annalisa Jenkins.