Astraveus, the benchtop cell factory company, has announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with The Netherlands Center for the Clinical Advancement of Stem Cell and Gene Therapies (NecstGen) to evaluate The Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory for the manufacturing of CAR-T therapies.
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Under the terms of the agreement, NecstGen will utilise Astraveus’ unique Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory at its facility in Leiden, to demonstrate its potential to significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency in CAR-T manufacturing in comparison to incumbent industry benchmarks. Additionally, NecstGen will produce Lentiviral vectors for Astraveus’ internal research and development needs.
Astraveus recently demonstrated the potential of its Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory with the first ever, end-to-end production of CAR-T cells within a microfluidic benchtop system and is now starting external testing of its new manufacturing platform. Astraveus’ technology, and its unique microfluidic approach, possesses the ability to simultaneously decrease manufacturing costs as well as increase process efficiency and throughput many times over.
Jérémie Laurent, PhD, chief executive officer of Astraveus, said: "NecstGen and Astraveus share a common passion and determination to deliver next-generation cell and gene therapies with increased accessibility and affordability. This partnership, with a leading European center of excellence for Cell and Gene Therapy, enables Astraveus to carry out external system demonstrations of our disruptive Lakhesys platform technology in a highly collaborative and transparent manner. We are impressed by the deep expertise, commitment and enthusiasm of NecstGen to tackle today’s constraints in cell therapy manufacturing, and we look forward to the forthcoming benefits of this partnership.”
Located at the Leiden Bio Science Park, one of Europe’s largest life science clusters, NecstGen supports academic, small, and large industrial therapy developers to translate research and early-stage clinical programs into patient treatments.