Xcell Therapeutics and EnCell Collaborate to Build an Advanced Biotherapeutics CDMO Platform 

(CEO Jong-Wook Jang), a CMO/CDMO specializing in cell and gene therapeutics, and Xcell Therapeutics, a leading culture medium company, announced on the 28th that they have signed a strategic partnership agreement to establish a production process for cell therapeutics.

Through this business agreement, the two companies plan to actively respond to the CMO and CDMO-related market, which is growing rapidly every year.

According to Research&Markets, the global CDMO market is expected to grow from USD 172.7 billion (KRW 217 trillion) in 2022 to USD 246.6 billion (KRW 310 trillion) by 2026, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3%.

Frost & Sullivan also predicts that the biopharmaceutical CDMO market will grow at a CAGR of 10.1% from $11.4 billion (KRW 14 trillion) in 2020 to $20.3 billion (KRW 25 trillion) in 2026, and that the cell and gene therapy CDMO market will grow at a CAGR of 31.0% from $2 billion (KRW 3 trillion) in 2020 to $10.1 billion (KRW 13 trillion) in 2026.

Currently, domestic companies such as Samsung Biologics, SK, and Lotte, as well as global multinational companies such as Lonza, Beringer Ingelheim, and Fujifilm, are competing in the CDMO market.

Through this agreement, the two companies plan to build a more effective and competitive 'CDMO platform specializing in advanced biotherapeutics' by combining the CDMO process development, design, and operation technology possessed by ENCEL and the dedicated medium manufacturing technology for the advanced bio industry possessed by Xcell Therapeutics.

In the long term, the two companies aim to implement the 'best practices' of a complete CDMO platform that can provide end-to-end services, including cell isolation, cell bank production, cell mass culture automation, formulation, drug substance production (DS), finished product production (DP), quality control (QC), and clinical approval support.

At the signing ceremony, Jang Jong-wook, CEO of ENCEL, said, "Through the localization of advanced biopharmaceuticals between the two companies, we aim to strengthen the production capacity of domestic cell and gene therapy developers and enhance the global competitiveness of the domestic cell and gene therapy industry ecosystem."

"After developing the world's first GMP-grade Serum-Free Chemically Defined Media for hMSCs, Xcell Therapeutics is expanding its pipeline to include hair follicle cell-specific media, exosome-specific media, and NK-specific media," said Lee Yi-il, CEO of Xcell Therapeutics. "Our diverse pipeline of culture media for the advanced bio industry can provide CDMOs with a wide range of options, and we are confident of the synergy with ENCEL."

Source: Biotimes (http://www.biotimes.co.kr)