Cell and Gene Therapy Processing?Personalised tumour treatments are expensive. This particularly applies to individual cancer therapies based on gene-modified T cells. Currently, they are produced manually or, at best, in a partially-automated process. In a collaboration project ProCell for Patient, two hospitals are currently working with Optima Pharma to develop an automated unit for the decentralised production of a CAR-T cell product in treatment centres.

Richter-Helm is a leading and expanding Germany-based contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). Richter-Helm provides excellent services in the continuously growing market of pharmaceutical biotechnology. Offering a broad range of microbial manufacturing, development and analytical services, Richter-Helm will bring customer projects to the next level.

Lengnau will become the newest site in Thermo Fisher Scientific’s biologics manufacturing network. The site is to be completed in 2022 and its staff of 200 will join the company.

The success of any adoptive cell therapy lies in how effectively and selectively engineered immune cells interact and kill cancer cells. Functional phenomics enables insights that can dramatically accelerate the development of next-gen cell therapies. evorion biotechnologies brings functional phenomics to pharma and biotech partners via exclusive access to a unique, proprietary pipeline for in-depth multi-modal analysis of thousands of cell-cell interactions at single-cell resolution.

BionTech SE, which has been very successful in the field of corona vaccines, is starting phase II tests with its colorectal cancer candidate BNT122.

This whitepaper provides insights into why it is critical to manage, optimize and streamline a supply chain to mitigate risks, such as those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Small-volume biopharmaceutical processes continue to grow as more biopharmaceutical, cell therapy and gene therapy companies develop products. A 2021 Association for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) report states that there are 1,085 cell, gene and tissue-based therapy developers worldwide. These companies are engaged in many small-volume (<10L) processes including early-stage drug development and autologous therapies.

Advent France Biotechnology’s has launched a second biotech seed fund with a first close at €86m. Since 2017, the French state fund has financed 15 startups in France, Spain, Belgium and Ireland with €68m.


Early phase clinical trials require expert support, often across many service areas and specialisms. Recruitment for trials can be complicated, with less flexibility and higher costs as you attempt to acquire top talent on a project-only basis. That’s why CROs are becoming increasingly indispensable. CROs offer fully formed, multi-skilled teams ready to go, who you can bring on board as and when needed.

Post-Brexit, UK ditches the strict EU regulation for genetic engineering: in future, gene-edited crops will be assessed just like any other new variety, the government said.