Lonza : CellPoint and Lonza to Leverage the Cocoon Platform for T-Cell Therapeutics Manufactured at the Point-of-Care

CellPoint and Lonza to Leverage the Cocoon Platform for T-Cell Therapeutics Manufactured at the Point-of-Care

• CellPoint and Lonza will collaborate to rapidly develop several T-cell based therapies and utilize the Cocoon^® Platform for clinical point-of-care manufacturing
• The goal is to provide a proof of concept for point-of-care manufacturing to reduce vein-to-vein time, decrease manufacturing costs, and minimize complex shipping logistics

Quote from Eytan Abraham, Head of Personalized Medicine, Lonza:

'We look forward to collaborating with CellPoint to accelerate and enable bringing novel cancer immunotherapies to the clinic and patients. The use of the Cocoon^® Platform, coupled with the array of CellPoints' therapies and technologies, and Lonza's manufacturing capabilities, will help to accelerate the path to the clinic and provide a smoother path to commercial approval. This collaboration also aims to illustrate the promise and feasibility of manufacturing autologous immunotherapies at the point-of-care by leveraging Cocoon's unique platform capabilities.'

Quote from Tol Trimborn, Chief Executive Officer, CellPoint:

'CellPoint has selected Lonza's Cocoon^®Platform as the next-generation state-of-the-art closed and automated manufacturing device to develop its point-of-care strategy to make CAR-T affordable and more readily accessible. Over the past year, we have been working with Lonza to develop a manufacturing process that will allow a six to seven day vein-to-vein time to treat cancer patients.'

Leiden, Netherlands, Maryland, US and Basel, Switzerland, 23 June 2021- CellPoint, a private, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel platforms for gene-modified T-cells to treat cancers, and Lonza, a leading cell and gene therapy manufacturer, announced today that the companies have a cell therapy manufacturing agreement in place.

This collaboration, aimed at developing CellPoint's T-cell therapies for treating various cancers, will leverage Lonza's expertise in process development and its proprietary Cocoon^® Platform. This automated and closed patient-scale cell therapy manufacturing platform offers flexibility to execute a wide variety of protocols within a single system, which is enabled through a single-use, highly customizable cassette and custom programming.

Cell-based immunotherapies have been shown to be potent drugs that can treat multiple forms of incurable cancers. CellPoint has acquired various assets to develop CAR-T immunotherapies targeting hematological tumors and is intending to target solid tumors as well.

One of the key hurdles in making these therapies more accessible to larger patient populations is the difficulty in manufacturing these therapies at scale, robustly, and close to patients. CellPoint will utilize the Cocoon^® Platform to manufacture cell therapies at the point-of-care, thereby lowering manufacturing costs, decreasing turnaround times to treatment, and minimizing complex logistics.