Out of the shadows, new CDMO Artis BioSolutions has decloaked on a mission to tackle the tricky production process for advanced therapeutics.
Artis officially emerged from stealth on Wednesday, marking its launch as a San Diego-based cell and gene therapy CDMO with the acquisition of personalized medicine compatriot Landmark Bio.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Landmark, which has a 44,000-square-foot production site located in Watertown, Massachusetts, focuses on development and manufacturing of cell and gene therapies, as well as genome editing. The company also boasts fill-finish capabilities and produces viral vectors, mRNA and lipid nanoparticles, too.
While Landmark will now be flying Artis' banner, Artis said in an April 2 press release that Landmark will continue to operate as a distinct entity.
Thanks to the Landmark deal, Artis now feels it's in a good spot to pitch itself as an end-to-end production partner for developers working in the underserved yet fast-growing field of advanced therapies, the company said in its release.
The fledgling CDMO aims to tackle multiple modalities in a bid to cut project timelines, lower manufacturing costs and help bolster product quality and supply chain efficiency.
“Advanced therapies will continue to be a driving force of innovation in the biopharma ecosystem, and we believe the industry is at an inflection point in advancing and developing the critical processes and the manufacturing of these therapies,” Artis CEO Brian Neel said in the release.
Landmark was founded in 2021 by a consortium of partners that included Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cytiva, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
In late 2023, Landmark inked a multi-year manufacturing agreement with Galapagos, which announced earlier this year that it would embark on yet another restructuring. The biotech's latest downsizing effort will form two separate publicly traded companies and result in the loss of 40% of Galapagos' employees.
As part of the deal, Landmark was tapped to produce clinical trial batches of Galapagos' experimental CAR-T cell therapies for blood cancers.
Despite continued growing pains for both the cell and gene therapy industries, investments and startups in the space continue to proliferate, including efforts centered on new production technologies.
On that front, technology platform startup Cellares revealed earlier this week that its automated cell therapy manufacturing platform, dubbed the Cell Shuttle, received an Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation from the FDA.
The designation, for which guidance was finalized in December, is meant to incentivize manufacturers and drugmakers to leverage new or repurposed technology that could slash development timelines, improve production processes and ensure steady supplies of key drugs.