Growing demand for CAR-T cell therapies is, in part, due to the increasing number of eligible patients. The market for CAR-T is expected to grow by almost 30% over the next decade. Meanwhile, there are over 1,500 CAR-Ts in development for cancer.
In response, MedTherapy, a Boston-based cell and gene CMO, has new tools to address this challenge. The company announced this news at the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
MedTherapy has developed “Innovative technologies and measures to ameliorate the current constraints and crisis in meeting the increasing demands for manufacturing CAR-T cell therapies for an ever-increasing number of eligible patients, through its ninety percent reduction in manufacturing time and more than seventy percent reduction in manufacturing costs,” according to the company press release.
CAR-T was first approved for cancer by the FDA in 2017, and was heralded as a potential cancer “cure.” Since then, a half a dozen CAR-T cell therapies have been approved with impressive clinical responses in patients with B-cell malignancies and multiple myeloma.
However, the industry is currently suffering from several manufacturing related constraints that are severely limiting immediate access to this potentially life-saving treatment.
“The current manufacturing crisis faced, by the CAR-T cell therapy industry in particular and the cell and gene therapy industry, in general is a global crisis. A global crisis warrants a global solution which is what we have developed. Our integrated manufacturing model ameliorates all the major constraints and provides efficient, compliant and speedy manufacturing of both, the viral vectors, and the CAR-T cell therapy products at global scales,” said Bikash Verma, MD, CEO of MedTherapy.
He added, “Some of our partners only need help with production of viral vectors while others want us to manufacture their final CAR-T cell product. We are able to help any and all CAR-T cell therapy biotechs, worldwide with all of their manufacturing needs at dramatically reduced manufacturing costs.”
The well-known manufacturing constraints for this personalized treatment include a long duration up to several weeks to manufacture these treatments, acute shortage of viral vectors needed to develop the CAR-T cell therapy, supply chain constraints, and the huge cost to manufacture often exceeding well over one hundred thousand dollars for each individual therapy manufactured.
MedTherapy’s manufacturing model is an end to end, full spectrum, fully integrated CMO for CAR-T and other cell and gene therapies.
Its model, the company says, has dramatically reduced the manufacturing time and cost and overcomes supply chain challenges, which were even more accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic. MedTherapy’s manufacturing facilities are located in metro-Boston and New Delhi’s capital region. The company says it has has global networks and partnerships in U.S., Canada, U.K., and India.
“MedTherapy is poised to become a pioneering CMO which can meet the ever-increasing demand for manufacturing both, the viral vectors manufactured according to GMP, as well as, manufacturing CAR-T cell therapies. This is great news for CAR-T cell therapy industry. In addition, its ability to dramatically reduce the cost of manufacturing will be a boon for the industry especially the smaller to mid-sized companies which are often struggling to bear the huge manufacturing costs incurred in-house or through their CMOs,” said Knut Niss, PhD, former CTO for Mustang Bio, a CAR-T cell company based in Worcester, MA.
