MedTherapy Biotechnology Inc., a privately held CAR-T cell cancer gene therapy biotechnology company, announced that its technology could potentially reduce the time and cost to manufacture CAR-T cell cancer gene therapy to a fraction, approximately by seventy percent.
Its clinical development plan and strategies are being presented at the BIOTECH SHOWCASE conference being held during the JPMorgan Chase Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, CA.
“MedTherapy was founded with a mission to make the exorbitantly expensive CAR-T cell cancer gene therapy more affordable and accessible. “We are very pleased to announce that our strategies have finally made this vision a reality,” said Bikash Verma, MD, DVM, CEO of MedTherapy Biotechnology. “While CAR-T cell gene therapy for cancer has proven itself to be a miraculous life-saving therapy, its current exorbitant cost renders it unaffordable for many patients in the United States and virtually all patients in developing countries.” Together with our US and global partners, we are trying to change that paradigm by developing an integrated strategy for the next generation of CAR-T cell therapy and manufacturing processes to dramatically reduce its cost.
CAR-T therapy is plagued by several constraints responsible for its exorbitant cost and complex manufacturing processes, which take four to six weeks to manufacture; an industry-wide lack of capacity to scale up manufacturing; an acute shortage of the most critical raw material, the viral vectors; and patients relapsing after being administered CAR-T cell therapy. While there has been a lot of focus on increasing its efficacy, not commensurate attention has been paid to making it affordable and accessible globally. That would necessitate significant innovation of the processes, virus vectors, and scaling up production, collectively.
Thus, instead of being singularly focused upon only the clinical development of CAR-T cell therapy, MedTherapy has developed an integrated approach by building three complementary strategies and infrastructures to overcome the current existential constraints: the next generation of more efficient CAR-T therapy candidates; a global GMP grade commercial manufacturing facility with cost- and time-efficient technologies; and next-generation virus vector technology and facilities for large-scale industry-level manufacturing of viral vector, which is the most critical raw material and the most expensive. Together, our integrated and innovative approaches lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost and time to manufacture, and thus the reduced cost of CAR-T cell gene therapy.
Our technology is being developed to manufacture CAR-T cell cancer gene therapy in a few days instead of the industry average of four to six weeks. and at dramatically reduced costs.
Dr. Daniel DeAngelo, Chief of the Division of Leukemia, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has lauded MedTherapy’s efforts to make CAR-T therapies more affordable and accessible globally. “CAR-T cell therapy offers many patients the only avenue towards a cure; therefore, CAR-T cell therapy needs to be made more affordable and readily accessible for cancer patients everywhere.” To this effect, MedTherapy’s s mission and strategies will go a long way in helping our patients access this novel and disease-modifying therapy.”
MedTherapy Integrated Approach
MedTherapy is a full-spectrum, end-to-end, integrated, CAR-T therapy biotech. In partnership with our collaborators, we are developing more efficacious CAR-T cell therapies, as demonstrated in pre-clinical data for hematological indications, which are now entering Phase I trials globally. It has built a global commercial manufacturing facility deploying next-generation technology. It has also built an industry-scale virus vector manufacturing facility with increased transfection and transduction capacities. Our integrated approach encompasses an efficacious product, a global manufacturing facility, and large-scale vector production which collectively will lead to more efficacious CAR-T therapy at a dramatically reduced cost and time, and scaled-up capacity, to make it affordable for all eligible patients worldwide. We believe that unless such an integrated approach is undertaken in collaboration with global partners, the cost of CAR-T cell therapy cannot be reduced dramatically to make it affordable, especially in developing countries.
About MedTherapy
MedTherapy is a cell and gene therapy manufacturing company, cofounded by pioneering medical experts on cancer gene therapies from leading US academic institutions and CAR-T cell therapy biotechs. The Company has built Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) grade global manufacturing facility and technologies to manufacture CAR-T, CAR-NK, and other cell and gene therapies in Boston, Massachusetts, and New Delhi, India. It is working in partnership with leading academic centers in US and India, and CAR-T therapy biotechs. in US and UK. Our mission is to innovate and scale up the cell and gene therapy manufacturing processes to make these life-saving therapies affordable and accessible in the US and globally.