Astraveus SAS (Astraveus), the benchtop cell factory company, announces 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.
Under the terms of the agreement, NecstGen will utilize Astraveus’ unique Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory at its state-of-the-art 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 revolutionary 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, commented: “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.”
Paul Bilars, chief executive officer of NecstGen, said: “At NecstGen we partner with leading innovators to deliver next-generation therapeutics for patients. Astraveus’ novel approach to the manufacturing of CAR-T cells represents a breakthrough technology with the ability to transform the industry by enabling the faster and cheaper development of these cutting-edge treatments.” 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.
Astraveus is a Paris-based life science company dedicated to making cell therapies with maximized quality at order-of-magnitude lower cost. With the unique Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory, Astraveus provides bioprocessing innovation at the cellular level, utilizing cutting-edge microfluidic technology to enhance process optimization and scalability from pre-clinical to commercial manufacturing.
NecstGen is a non-profit CDMO and centre of excellence for cell and gene therapy, located in a purpose-built GMP facility at the Leiden Bio Science Park, the largest bio-cluster in the Netherlands.