Two Pennsylvania-headquartered companies on Oct. 15 announced a new partnership that could potentially expand patient access and manufacturing capacity across the growing cell therapy sector.
Specifically, Radnor, Pa.-based Avantor Inc., a global provider of products and services for the life sciences and advanced technologies industries, is teaming up with Philadelphia-based BlueWhale Bio, which focuses on improving how immune cell therapies are made — especially CAR-T therapies used to treat cancer — by making the process faster and more reliable.
The partnership will combine Avantor’s bioprocessing and custom ancillary-reagent manufacturing capabilities with BlueWhale Bio’s Synecta cell-derived nanoparticle (CDNP) platform, which mimics natural T-cell stimulation.
Their collaboration aims to accelerate CDNP manufacturing scale-up to help CAR-T developers significantly reduce expansion time, and their teams will produce GMP-grade CDNP materials to support this next-generation manufacturing approach, the companies said.
“Our partnership with BlueWhale Bio reflects Avantor’s commitment to delivering highly relevant manufacturing solutions to customers and enabling next-generation therapies through innovation, reliability, and scale,” said Avantor President and CEO Emmanuel Ligner. “CAR-T therapies have transformed cancer care, but manufacturing remains a major bottleneck characterized by high cost, variability, and lengthy release cycles.
“The Avantor–BlueWhale Bio collaboration addresses these challenges by integrating next-generation activation and expansion reagents into a GMP-ready, scalable platform,” LIgner said.
BlueWhale Bio said its research shows that its technology can help cells grow faster, increase cell yield, and reduce the number of steps in the process. This could mean shorter manufacturing times and less stress on the cells.
“BlueWhale Bio was founded to address the toughest manufacturing challenges in cell therapy. Failure to meet target dose levels in immune cell therapies can have a critical downstream impact on patients,” said Peter Keller, CEO of BlueWhale Bio. “By partnering with Avantor, we’re combining our novel Synecta platform with industrial-strength execution to accelerate the journey from discovery to delivery.”