Dive brief:
- AstraZeneca, which is looking to increase its presence in cell therapy, plans to invest $300 million in a new manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland, that will focus on cancer treatments.
- The facility will manufacture cell therapies for the company’s clinical trials as well as for future commercial supply, the UK drugmaker said on Tuesday. AstraZeneca expects to create more than 150 new jobs at the plant.
- The 84,000-square-foot space should be fully operational by 2026, according to a press release from the state of Maryland. It’s just a few miles from the main research and development center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which AstraZeneca acquired through its $15.6 billion purchase of MedImmune in 2007.
Diving knowledge:
AstraZeneca is ramping up cell therapy after a late entry into the field. In 2022, it made its first significant acquisition in the area, buying privately held Neogene Therapeutics. And the following year, it formed a partnership with Quell Therapeutics to work on cell therapies for autoimmune diseases. The company has also reached development agreements with AbelZeta in China and Cellectis.
At the same time, AstraZeneca has been exploring gene therapy, acquiring gene-editing specialist LogicBio Therapeutics in 2022 and then signing a deal worth up to $1 billion to acquire early-stage gene therapy programs and related technologies from Pfizer.
The new Rockville production site focuses on T-cell therapies designed to boost the body’s immune system and attack cancer. In the future, the facility may have capacity for other disease areas, AstraZeneca said.
As part of its latest announcement, AstraZeneca unveiled its cell therapy pipeline, which includes preclinical work and several Phase 1 trials of so-called autologous T-cell receptor and CAR-T therapies.
The company said its ultimate goal is to develop a library of “non-commercial” therapies derived from cells from healthy donors. These could be given to patients immediately, rather than undergoing the complicated and time-consuming process of extracting a patient’s cells, engineering them in a laboratory and reinfusing them.
