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An Italian-based cell therapy business has just been bought by Evotec SE, a German therapeutics company. Evotec just announced the strategic transaction to buy Rigenerand Srl, with the deal, signed in May 2022, now completed. Based out of Medolla, Italy, the cell technology company working in the field of cGMP manufacturing of cell therapies will operate as Evotec (Modena) Srl going forward. Acquisition finalized Massimo Dominici, scientific director of Evotec (Modena) and professor of oncology at the University of Modena said: “We are very pleased that the acquisition of Rigenerand has been finalized and the teams have started working together as one. “The concept of the Evotec Cell Accelerator is already coming to life and matches what is happening in Modena: enriching the pre-existing know-how through the experienced Evotec team. I am therefore convinced that the field has a new player capable of addressing the challenges of next generation cell therapy products, accelerating their development and manufacturing towards the clinic.” Cell therapy is a fast-growing and highly promising field of biomedical research with the potential to achieve substantial disease-modifying or even curative effects within a single treatment. Deriving cell therapy products from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has opened up an almost unlimited source of consistent-quality material for large patient numbers, the company said. However, the scalability of the approach from bench to bedside is central for moving cell therapy approaches into clinical phases and thus, essential for the approval of any such therapy. Evotec’s cell therapy platform EVOcells integrates the full end-to-end spectrum from the discovery and development to the manufacturing of off-the-shelf iPSC-based cell therapy products. With a team of cell therapy experts, Evotec (Modena) adds cGMP manufacturing site to the EVOcells platform which the company says adds capacity, critical expertise and capabilities to the critical scale-up of complex cell-based therapies. Important addition Werner Lanthaler, chief executive officer of Evotec said: “The Evotec Cell Accelerator gives us the opportunity to take our cell therapy business to the next level. We are extremely confident that this important addition to our EVOcells platform will enable us to progress our internal portfolio of early innovative projects. “Further, the addition will allow us to enter new partnerships and support many projects towards clinical applications and onto the market in a very efficient way. This will have a significant impact to a great number of patients who are significantly under-served with the currently available treatment regimens.” Cell therapies can be used as a regenerative strategy, replacing a patient’s dysfunctional cells or are used as adoptive immunotherapy to help the immune system fight cancer. Sources for cell therapeutics range from the patient’s own material, a healthy donor or from stem cells. The advent of iPSCs that can be generated directly from somatic cells has opened up stem cells as an almost unlimited source of consistent-quality material for such cell therapies. iPSC-derived, off-the shelf therapeutics are considered to be one of the most promising approaches in the cell therapy space.

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