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Catalent and Abzena both recently announced substantial investments into new biologics facilities. Catalent is spending up to $160 million to build a new manufacturing facility near Oxford, UK. Catalent plans to equip the facility with “state-of-the-art capabilities for the development and manufacture of biologic therapies and vaccines, including mRNA, proteins and other advanced modalities,” and hopes to start servicing customer programs from the new facility before the end of 2022. According to Catalent, it has expertise in biosimilar development and manufacturing , with multiple biosimilar products on the market utilizing its technology. Abzena’s new facility just opened and is in the U.S., near Abzena’s manufacturing center in San Diego. The new facility is focused on biologics testing and will offer “Abzena’s partners access to cell-based and PCR safety assays; and viral clearance studies to support their IND, IMPD, BLA and MAA applications.”  According to Abzena, with this latest investment, it now offers “all services appropriate for research cell banks, characterization of master and working cell banks, end-of-production of cell cultures, and bulk drug substances.”  Abzena had announced last year  that it had partnered with BioXpress Therapeutics to support the development and manufacture of biosimilars for global customers. The opening of the new facility marks Abzena’s sixth site across the globe.

Expanding Operations in Biologics

1-Apr-2022
In addition to building out existing and additional manufacturing facilities, the funding will be used to augment drug discovery and cell line offerings
Global CDMO Abzena has announced a $65m round of investment, with funding sources including majority-owner Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS), Biospring Partners, and other affiliated investors. This latest investment will allow the company to address growing demand by increasing the capacity of its manufacturing capabilities for

Abzena secures $65m in funding round

Josh Sullivan
Associate Editor
Ear­li­er this week, the San Diego CD­MO Abzena land­ed a $65 mil­lion in­vest­ment to ex­pand its drug sub­stance and fill-fin­ish ca­pac­i­ty. Part of that in­vest­ment is head­ed to al­ready-ex­ist­ing sites, and some of the fund­ing is head­ed to a new lo­ca­tion in San­ford, NC, about 45 miles south­west of Raleigh. That North Car­oli­na site will be the com­pa­ny’s sixth man­u­fac­tur­ing lo­ca­tion once it is com­plet­ed. It’s join­ing a re­gion — the Re­search Tri­an­gle Park — that is blos­som­ing with de­vel­op­ment. NC Gov. Roy Coop­er has made it well-known that he is do­ing his best to draw in biotech and phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing tal­ent, adding hun­dreds of new jobs and bol­ster­ing the economies of even small­er towns and cities out­side the big three: Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Welsh, Car­son, An­der­son & Stowe and Biospring Part­ners led the fundrais­ing ef­forts. Biospring co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner Michelle Dipp took the time to an­swer some ques­tions about life sci­ence in­vest­ing, the North Car­oli­na boom, and what’s im­pres­sive about Abzena. What ex­cites you about Abzena and what the team is do­ing? We’re the­mat­ic in­vestors, and we’re very bull­ish on the con­tract de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing space specif­i­cal­ly re­lat­ed to bi­o­log­ics and cell and gene ther­a­py. Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies spend ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200 bil­lion per year on re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and most of them out­source their drug man­u­fac­tur­ing be­cause it has be­come so spe­cial­ized and high-tech. Be­fore meet­ing the Abzena team, we were en­thu­si­as­tic about the space and iden­ti­fied a grow­ing need in bi­o­log­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing. Abzena has sites in both the UK and the US, and they have the abil­i­ty to part­ner with com­pa­nies at the ear­ly stages of de­vel­op­ment and serve them all the way through to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. [The com­pa­ny] is unique­ly po­si­tioned to serve a large and grow­ing num­ber of bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies fo­cused on im­por­tant new bi­o­log­ic med­i­cines for pa­tients, specif­i­cal­ly an­ti­body drugs con­ju­gates, a grow­ing area of med­i­cines for bio­phar­ma. The Abzena lead­er­ship team in­cludes a di­verse group of se­nior ex­perts tak­ing on some of the biggest chal­lenges the in­dus­try is fac­ing to­day. What makes them stand out? What made Abzena stand out to us was their abil­i­ty to de­liv­er the full spec­trum of in­te­grat­ed dis­cov­ery, from de­vel­op­ment through to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Abzena’s ADC drug de­vel­op­ment ser­vices re­main un­matched. They were re­cent­ly named the Best Con­tract Re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion at the World ADC Awards. They’re ad­dress­ing grow­ing glob­al de­mand by in­creas­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of their man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties for both clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial sup­ply. What are some of the trends in phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing that are on your radar, and why? The bio­phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing trends fol­low the tech­nol­o­gy trends. There­fore, with more bi­o­log­ics and AD­Cs fill­ing phar­ma R&D pipelines, we see a de­mand for spe­cial­ized man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness­es to serve those needs. Sim­i­lar­ly, with new­er med­i­cines such as cell and gene ther­a­pies in de­vel­op­ment, we need CD­MOs ded­i­cat­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing those med­i­cines. Cell and gene ther­a­py is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing giv­en the man­u­fac­tur­ing process and med­i­cine are so close­ly in­ter­twined. Some of the oth­er trends we are watch­ing are how au­toma­tion, ro­bot­ics and soft­ware are im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fi­ca­cy of man­u­fac­tur­ing. We can use ma­chine learn­ing and AI to bet­ter pre­dict what hap­pens to a spe­cif­ic med­i­cine dur­ing scale up. Can you walk me through your process of in­vest­ing in life sci­ence com­pa­nies? Biospring is fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing long-term, durable themes that are dri­ving in­no­va­tion. We back high-growth ser­vices, tools, and soft­ware com­pa­nies at the in­ter­sec­tion of health­care and tech­nol­o­gy. We re­ly on our sharp knowl­edge of the space and our deep dili­gence process to vet new in­no­va­tions in the life sci­ence space. We be­lieve Abzena is solv­ing a crit­i­cal un­met need in the grow­ing, glob­al bi­o­log­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing mar­ket. Is there any­thing on the hori­zon at Biospring that we should keep an eye out for? Abzena is com­plet­ing the build out of its new fa­cil­i­ty in North Car­oli­na, and they’re hir­ing at all of their sites in the UK and the US. At Biospring, we’re plan­ning to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing their growth as they in­crease their man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the US, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in a re­gion like North Car­oli­na that is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such a boom in the life sci­ences in­dus­try. AUTHOR
Amber Tong
Senior Editor
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Q&A: Biospring co-founder explains recent investment in San Diego CDMO

Abzena announces the opening of a Biologics Testing Laboratory situated close to Abzena’s Biologics process development and manufacturing hub in San Diego, California.

Abzena opens a biologics testing lab to support partners programs

Abzena nabs $65M to bolster manufacturing and research services on both sides of the pond
fkansteiner
Tue, 04/12/2022 - 07:17

Abzena nabs $65M to bolster manufacturing and research services on both sides of the pond

Oncodesign (EPA: ALONC) is a biotechnology company and CRO that is able to predict and identify, at a very early stage, each molecule's therapeutic usefulness and potential to become an effective drug for fighting cancer and other serious illnesses with no known effective treatment.

Oncodesign

Alira Health is an international advisory firm providing integrated strategy, execution and innovation services for healthcare and life science companies. The company was founded in 1999 and is based in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Alira Health

Fabrice Viviani , head of Oncodesign service business unit , said , `` We are particularly thrilled to start this new partnership with Abzena and Alira Health to provide our customers with a premium integrated service for the discovery and development of novel biological agents to treat cancers and debilitating chronic inflammatory diseases .

Abzena, Alira Health and Oncodesign Launch DRIVE-Biologics

BiVictriX Therapeutics (BVX) is a biotech company focused on developing and licensing novel, highly-selective, bispecific antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) to target unmet medical need in blood cancer. BVX has invented a novel targeting strategy, the 'Dual Targeting Approach', to improve ADC specificity towards malignant cells through targeting two cell surface antigens simultaneously, expressed solely in a tumour-restricted co-expression pattern. The Company has two lead programs in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma.

BiVictriX Therapeutics

Abzena, BiVictriX Therapeutics Collaborate to Manufacture ADCs.
Abzena, BiVictriX Therapeutics Collaborate To Manufacture ADCs - Contract Pharma

BiVictriX Therapeutics PLC , Abzena team up to create next generation of cancer antibody-drug conjugates

BiVictriX Therapeutics, Abzena team up to create next generation of cancer antibody-drug conjugates

BioXpress focuses on development of high quality bio similar monoclonal antibodies and also engage in partnerships through licensing, collaborations and assist R&D management of biosimilar programs.It is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

BioXpress

Immunome (NASDAQ: IMNM) develops and commercializes therapeutic antibodies and medicines for the treatment of diseases.

Immunome

Abzena

Aptuit

ICON

Point Biomedical

University of California, San Francisco

Genentech

Amgen

Bespak

NextPharma

Arthur Andersen

Illumina

Biogen IDEC

Fougera Pharmaceuticals

Merck & Co.

Pfizer

U.S. Army

Concept Life Sciences

Catalent

Reading Scientific Services

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Companies involved in the research, development, and commercialization of chemically- or biologically-derived therapeutic & theranostic drugs. Excludes vitamins/supplements, CROs/clinical trial services.

Biopharma Tech

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Abzena is focused on providing proprietary technologies and value-added services to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals. Abzena is comprised of two wholly-owned subsidiary businesses: PolyTherics and Antitope, which have established a broad suite of complementary technologies that are designed to improve the chances of successful development of antibodies and proteins with enhanced therapeutic benefits. PolyTherics specializes in proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody-drug conjugate development and solutions for the optimization of the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals. Antitope focuses on immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunized therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture. Abzena was founded in 2001 and is based in London, England.

Name	Lotta Ljungqvist
Firm
Work History
Other Seats	Abzena

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Jonathan Goldman	Aptuit, ICON, Point Biomedical, and University of California, San Francisco	Chief Executive Officer	Current
Kimball Hall	Genentech, and Amgen	President, Chief Operating Officer	Current
Richard Millbank	Bespak, NextPharma, PwC, and Arthur Andersen	Chief Financial Officer	Current
David Williamson	Illumina, Biogen IDEC, Fougera Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Co., Pfizer, and U.S. Army	Chief Information Officer	Current
Philip Payne	Concept Life Sciences, Aptuit, Catalent, and Reading Scientific Services	Chief Commercial Officer	Current

Name	Jonathan Goldman	Kimball Hall	Richard Millbank	David Williamson	Philip Payne
Work History	Aptuit, ICON, Point Biomedical, and University of California, San Francisco	Genentech, and Amgen	Bespak, NextPharma, PwC, and Arthur Andersen	Illumina, Biogen IDEC, Fougera Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Co., Pfizer, and U.S. Army	Concept Life Sciences, Aptuit, Catalent, and Reading Scientific Services
Title	Chief Executive Officer	President, Chief Operating Officer	Chief Financial Officer	Chief Information Officer	Chief Commercial Officer
Status	Current	Current	Current	Current	Current

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