Developing serum free chemically defined media..."making it both economical and safe" 

Xcell Therapeutics is a bio-core materials company with the manufacturing infrastructure to economically and reliably produce safe cell therapeutics. Established in September 2015, the company has secured CellCorTM technology, the world's only 100% chemically defined serum-free chemotactic culture medium, and established a mass production system in less than four years.

Launched last year by Xcell Therapeutics, CellCor simultaneously addresses the shortcomings of animal-derived serum and conventional artificial media. With Selker, the unit cost per cell is three to four times lower than that of conventional serum media, and about three to five times more cells can be produced.

Dr. Lee Yi-il, CEO of Xcell Therapeutics, said, "The medium we make contains more than 200 ingredients. It's much easier to increase the efficacy because we can control all the components and proportions of the medium," said Lee. There are only six countries in the world that have serum-free medium technology, and it is considered to be highly scarce as it can be utilized for advanced regenerative medicine and advanced biopharmaceutical therapies such as stem cell therapy, gene therapy, and exosomes.

In addition, we have developed a medium development platform called 'XPorT' and built a library of hundreds of thousands of medium nutrition candidates. This compresses hundreds of millions of cases into a few hundred.

"With the know-how accumulated from the development of the selker and the CAMPs technology, we have completed the development of media for breast milk head cells and media for keratinocytes," said Lee. "We are providing customized media development services for each customer." Within the year, the company plans to launch a medium for stem cell-derived exosomes and a medium for immune cells, which are incorporated into next-generation technologies.

Meanwhile, Xcell Therapeutics has secured a cell culture medium production facility (Factory 1, Giheung GMP) with an annual production capacity of 100,000L to respond to the needs of global companies in the global medical market. It is the only company in Korea to produce advanced biopharmaceutical media in a GMP facility. Furthermore, the company has also purchased land to build a cell culture medium production facility in Osong Advanced Medical Complex in Chungcheongbuk-do, with the goal of completing the second plant in 2024.

In addition to Selker, the company's main products include 'specigrab', a virus transport medium (VTM). It is a product for viral diagnostic tests, which is necessary for transporting specimens from people who have been tested for COVID-19. Currently, the company has a mass production system that can produce 1 million badges per month.

"We are working with global companies in the U.S., Germany, and other countries to enter the overseas market, and we are discussing a business model for cooperation in the medium sector with CDMOs in North America," Lee said.

In 2023, the company plans to expand marketing by entering the NK-T immune cell therapy and exosome markets.

"Serum-free chemotactic media is one of the most important basic technologies in the field of advanced regenerative medicine and advanced biopharmaceuticals," said Mr. Lee. "We want to become a company that contributes to human health with our technology."

Source: https://www.donga.com/news/Economy/article/all/20230118/117494007/1