Bio-Techne, Fresenius Kabi, and Wilson Wolf Forms A New Joint Venture Company
January 21, 2020 at 08:30 am EST
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Bio-Techne, Fresenius Kabi, and Wilson Wolf have formed a new joint venture company to provide dedicated support to researchers and biopharmaceutical companies in the field of cell and gene therapy. The joint venture will focus on providing scalable manufacturing technologies and processes needed to develop and commercialize new cell and gene therapies. Each of the joint venture partners are contributing best-in-class products and unique expertise to the new venture. Each company in the joint venture has been working independently for years to develop technology that helps advance the manufacturing efficiency of cell and gene therapies. Consolidating these technologies and competencies is designed to establish the foundation of a superior manufacturing platform. Wilson Wolf’s patented G-Rex® technology is specifically designed as a scalable and practical platform for generation of personalized cell therapies. Bio-Techne’s broad range of proteins, reagents, media, and gene-editing technologies are designed to activate, reprogram, and stimulate cell growth. Fresenius Kabi’s Lovo® cell processing system washes, concentrates, and harvests cells at a scale needed to develop and commercialize cell and gene therapies. Over the next decade, cell and gene therapies are poised to make groundbreaking improvements in health care on a worldwide basis. The joint venture intends to be integrally involved by continuing to create and provide leading manufacturing technologies that keep pace with this rapidly expanding field and enable it to reach its full potential. There is a critical unmet need for better manufacturing solutions, because cell and gene therapies are often patient-specific. For example, T-Cell therapies for cancer involve collecting white blood cells, genetically modifying them to attack cancer cells, and reinfusing them to the patient. Given the size of the patient population that could benefit from these potentially curative treatments, efficient and scalable manufacturing is essential.
Bio-Techne Corporation specializes in the manufacture and marketing of products used in life science research. The group offers reagents and diagnostic tools for researchers, doctors, laboratories, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, etc. Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- biological and chemical reagents and analysis tools (74.3%): proteins, antibodies, molecules, culture serums, tools for cell work, tools for the study of proteins, immunoassay tools, etc.;
- diagnostic and genomics products (25.7%): reagents and products used in blood analysis, nucleic acid analysis, tissue biopsy, gene analysis, cancer and genetic carrier screening, etc.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (56.5%), the United Kingdom (4.4%), Europe/Middle East/Africa (19.4%), China (10%), Asia/Pacific (6.4%), and other (3.3%).