CellPoint and Lonza Enter Strategic Collaboration to Deliver CAR-T Cells to Patients at Point-of-Care

LEIDEN, Netherlands, June 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CellPoint, a cell therapy company developing CAR-T therapeutics for use at the point-of-care, announces an agreement with Lonza's Personalized Medicine Business Unit to employ Lonza's Cocoon^® Platform for clinical manufacturing of CellPoint's CAR-T cell therapies at the point-of-care, more rapidly and at lower cost.

CellPoint is developing various CAR-T immunotherapies to treat multiple cancers. One of the key hurdles in making these therapies more accessible to larger patient populations is the difficulty in manufacturing at-scale, robustly, and close to patients. CellPoint and Lonza will utilize Lonza's Cocoon^® Platform in combination with CellPoint's online xCellit Platform for workflow management to manufacture cell therapies at the point-of-care. This can lower manufacturing costs and decrease time to treatment, with vein-to-vein time lowered to as little as 5-7 days compared to the current industry standard of more than a month, and also circumvent complex logistics.

The agreement leverages CellPoint's proprietary CAR-T cell therapies, process management expertise and automated workflow along with Lonza's Cocoon^® Platform, a world-leading hardware solution for integrated cell and gene therapy manufacturing, as well as Lonza's extensive process development expertise. CellPoint will be responsible for site selection, technical operations, clinical development and regulatory approval of the CAR-T therapies, while Lonza will be responsible for all aspects of integrating and using the Cocoon^® Platform at the selected clinical sites.

Tol Trimborn, Chief Executive Officer of CellPoint, said: "CellPoint's T-cell therapies have enormous potential for treating various cancers. This agreement will allow us to accelerate our path to the clinic, treating more patients sooner, and help to solve the key issues facing CAR-T therapeutics. We are very pleased that our disruptive model and agile CAR-T development organization is backed by the most reliable partner in the industry, using the Cocoon® platform."

Eytan Abraham, Head of Lonza Personalized Medicine, commented: "We look forward to collaborating with CellPoint to enable and accelerate bringing novel cancer immunotherapies to the clinic and patients. Use of the Cocoon® Platform, coupled with the array of process development, manufacturing expertise and tools that Lonza brings to the bear, will help to accelerate the path to the clinic, and provide a smooth path to commercial approval. By leveraging the Cocoon's unique platform capabilities, this collaboration aims to illustrate the promise and feasibility of manufacturing autologous immunotherapies at the point-of-care into approved routine use."

About CellPoint

CellPoint is a Dutch (EU) company founded to provide affordable and readily available CAR-T therapies for all patients in need. The CellPoint CAR-T treatment workflow is designed for quality and patient safety, while driving down the time-to-treatment and costs by automation at the point-of-care. Clinical centers of excellence have been selected that have experienced hematology teams and a local cell processing facility. These centers are equipped with a Cocoon® Platform and receive full training and support to manufacture CAR-T therapies and to treat patients. Clinicians are enabled to schedule and perform CAR-T treatments in one week, without complex logistics. CellPoint's secure and online xCellit platform, developed with Hypertrust Patient Data Care, Germany, is used to facilitate scheduling and monitoring of the CAR-T treatment workflow for the various stakeholders. In 2020 CellPoint raised series A funding from +ND Capital and the Dutch government. Find out more at www.cellpoint.bio.

About the Cocoon® Platform

The Cocoon® Platform is a closed, automated system for patient-scale cell therapy manufacturing. Highly customisable and scalable, it integrates multiple steps and streamlines cell processing workflows from patient sample to final product. Protocols including isolation, activation, transduction/transfection, expansion and harvest occur in a climate controlled, validated cell manufacturing system.

About Lonza

Lonza is the preferred global partner to the pharmaceutical, biotech and nutrition markets. We work to prevent illness and enable a healthier world by supporting our customers to deliver new and innovative medicines that help treat a wide range of diseases. We achieve this by combining technological insight with world-class manufacturing, scientific expertise and process excellence. These enable our customers to commercialize their discoveries and innovations in the healthcare sector.

Founded in 1897 in the Swiss Alps, today Lonza operates across five continents. With approximately 14,000 full-time employees, we are built from high-performing teams and of individual talent who make a meaningful difference to our own business, as well as to the communities in which we operate. The company generated sales of CHF 4.5 billion in 2020 with a CORE EBITDA of CHF 1.4 billion. Find out more at www.lonza.com.

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SOURCE CellPoint