GE Healthcare Equips China Cell Therapy Manufacturing Plant with FlexFactory

On June 7, 2018, GE Healthcare announced that it will provide a FlexFactory for cell therapy to Xiangxue Pharmaceutical (XPH), which gives XPH a semi-automated end-to-end manufacturing platform to help scale up, digitize, and accelerate manufacturing processes for its cell therapy clinical trials and future commercialization. The FlexFactory platform is expected to be operational in March 2019.

The project marks the first application of the FlexFactory manufacturing platform for cell immunotherapy drugs based on high-affinity and high-specificity T-cell receptors (TCR), according to GE Healthcare. XPH aims to deliver a new-generation TCR T-cell therapy for treating cancer.

The manufacturing process for cell therapies is complex and a challenge for companies to produce at an industrial scale. For this reason, GE Healthcare developed FlexFactory for cell therapy to help achieve stable, safe, and scalable manufacturing for cell therapy products. The platform helps shorten the commercialization cycle through accelerated translation from scientific research to clinical trials to industrial-scale production, according to the company. GE Healthcare will also provide XPH with training services, process development, flexible cell processing equipment, and digital connectivity solutions.

"As a new breakthrough in cancer treatment, the importance of cell immunotherapy has gained consensus by the global medical industry, offering great hope for humans to combat cancer. As we continue development in precision medicine, we look forward to long-term collaboration with GE Healthcare, using digital and semi-automated technologies as well as comprehensive analytical methods, to help us more efficiently produce treatments for patients,” said Yonghui Wang, chairman of XPH, in a company press release.

“FlexFactory will help XPH establish a standardized and large-scale manufacturing process for cell immunotherapy in line with requirements for future commercialization. We look forward to continuing to support the overall development and industrialization of China's cell and gene therapy industry,” added Qing Li, general manager, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Greater China, in the press release.

Source: GE Healthcare