eXmoor Pharma and KU Leuven join forces in AAV production

Under the collaboration, the new partners will bring in their complementary scientific, regulatory and manufacturing capabilities to accelerate innovative cell and gene therapies from bench to first-in-human trials.

KU Leuven and university hospitals Leuven (UZ Leuven)  established the cell and gene therapy hub last year as a translational vehicle for their most promising gene therapy assets. A central focus of the partnership with eXmoor will be the development of adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy programmes using intellectual property from KU Leuven. KU Leuven’s Trellis Research Groupm under Els Henckaerts will play a key role as the AAV innovation partner.

eXmoor and Trellis will engage in a co-development research collaboration to create a proprietary AAV producer cell line. The cell line will be jointly owned and deployed for both KU Leuven and eXmoor clients, supporting scalable and cost-effective vector production. Furthermore, eXmoor will act as the venture’s in-house CMC partner, providing asset assessment through its proprietary Health Check Questionnaire, regulatory and manufacturing strategy, and cost of goods analysis. eXmoor’s integrated consultancy team will support the venture across all translational and technical planning activities, ensuring early scientific decisions align with future GMP manufacturing requirements.  eXmoor and Trellis will also collaborate to build a scalable AAV platform process incorporating KU Leuven’s licensed IP. Quality and regulatory elements will be embedded from the outset, enabling eXmoor to manage process development, manufacturing science and technology (MSAT), technology transfer, and GMP production from its UK-based facility. Finally, eXmoor will support the new hub with process development and GMP manufacturing expertise and provision, ensuring access to the technical capabilities needed as its programmes advance.

“By uniting KU Leuven’s academic leadership, Trellis’ scientific innovation and eXmoor’s development and manufacturing expertise, we are creating a launchpad for next-generation therapies,” said Angela Osborne, CEO of eXmoor Pharma. “Over the years, our lab has worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between academic innovation and real-world therapeutic applications,” said Henckaerts. “This partnership […] represents the final critical step in our mission to streamline the path from discovery to clinical impact, ensuring that our advanced AAV vector technologies can reach patients more efficiently and effectively”.

Most recently, German researchers reported a new vector technology with the potential to eliminate intrinsice downsides of AAV and lentiviral vectors in gene and CAR-T cell therapies.