On Nov 29th 2022, Avectas announced the expansion of a partnership that started on March 2020 with Toronto-based CCRM and its subsidiary OmniaBio Inc. – a CDMO that enables the development of cell therapies for clinical and commercial manufacture. 

This expanded collaboration will build on the expertise of CCRM and OmniaBio’s iPSC manufacturing processes by combining it with Avectas’ non-viral cell engineering platform SOLUPORE®. 

The desired outcome is the development of effective ready-to-use cell therapies, derived from healthy donors’ iPSCs that will break the access barrier for patients with diseases such as cancer, inflammation and metabolic diseases.

The SOLUPORE^® technology facilitates sequential cell modification while maintaining cell health,  by efficiently delivering protein and nucleic acid cargo into cells with minimum perturbation.

“We are delighted to expand our partnership with CCRM and OmniaBio to leverage their deep experience in iPSC reprogramming, gene editing and manufacturing processes to support the translation of our SOLUPORE^® platform towards clinical applications.

Combining Avectas’ novel cell engineering platform with CCRM and OmniaBio’s extensive knowledge in the development of manufacturing processes for cell therapies will accelerate the availability of novel edited iPSC banks for allogeneic cell therapies.”

_{Michael Maguire, PhD, CEO of Avectas}

“We’re very pleased to be continuing our partnership with Avectas in a project that is designed to move the industry closer to developing “off-the-shelf” cell therapies for patients. With the addition of OmniaBio’s manufacturing capabilities, we have the infrastructure and technical expertise to support the translation of the SOLUPORE^® platform for clinical use across a broader number of cell types.”

_{Michael May, PhD, President and CEO of CCRM}

“CCRM spun-out OmniaBio to provide cell and gene technology developers with a new and differentiated option in the CDMO space that not only provides expertise and capacity across the entire development spectrum, but also works with technology developers to catalyze the commercialization of the next wave of innovative process and analytical tools. OmniaBio has deep subject matter expertise in bioprocessing and cell therapy manufacturing, and we are delighted to be collaborating on this project.”

_{Mitchel Sivilotti, CEO of OmniaBio}

Read the full press release below.