Center for Breakthrough Medicines Accelerates Plans to Build the Largest Cell Therapy Manufacturing Operation in the World

The Center for Breakthrough Medicines (CBM) in partnership with the Discovery Labs announced today the acceleration of plans to build capacity to manufacture more than 10,000 patient therapies in direct response to the critical shortage of cell therapy supply, which will help patients win their courageous battles against cancer.

“We are acutely aware of the importance of getting these lifesaving therapies to patients immediately,” said Joerg Ahlgrimm, Chief Executive Officer of Center for Breakthrough Medicines. “We share their race against time and apply extreme urgency to everything we do. There is a critical shortage of cell therapy manufacturing in the world forcing doctors to make heartbreaking decisions resulting in patient deaths that could be avoided. We focus every day on our patients and their families, so the intense urgency of our mission is never compromised.”

Planning has begun on a massive expansion of CBM’s cell therapy manufacturing suites and supporting infrastructure which when completed will have the ability to produce treatments for more than 10,000 patients per year, the largest in the world. While a final cost has yet to be determined, the expansion is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming years.

CBM is currently providing process development, analytical development and testing capabilities with extensive viral vector, cell therapy and plasmid DNA manufacturing coming online monthly.

“Everyone at CBM works to save lives. This decision not only provides critically needed manufacturing capacity but also emphasizes CBM’s unwavering commitment to deliver advanced therapies for patients in need,” said John Lee, Vice President and Head of Cell Therapy at CBM. “CBM’s steadfast commitment to the patient is underscored by this decision.”

CBM’s facility will manufacture cell therapies across indications including oncology immunotherapies and regenerative medicine applications. The state-of-the-art facilities will be forward engineered with modular designs to adapt an array of cell types, manufacturing processes, and capacity demands to maximize efficiency while minimizing costs. To further enable next-generation cell therapies, the CBM team will implement rapid autologous manufacturing, high-fidelity gene-editing capabilities, and fully automated processes prior to the facility coming online.

CBM is working with multiple academic institutions and innovator companies to advance these critical modalities, lower cost, shorten timelines and scale manufacturing of approved therapies so that all patients can receive treatment.