The Swiss company has bought out Codiak Bioscience’s exosome manufacturing site in the US and Exosomics’ service unit in Italy.
The Exosomics deal includes its service team, service assets and laboratories in Siena. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Codiak will retain its pipeline of therapeutic candidates as well as its exosome engineering and drug-loading technologies. Codiak will receive, as part of the deal, around $65m of cGMP manufacturing services in kind. The companies will also establish a Center of Excellence for the development of exosome manufacturing technologies.
Exosomes are extracellular vesicles excreted by cells into the surrounding fluids that serve as a form of cell-to-cell communication. Cells can exchange metabolites, genetic information, and proteins through exosomes. It is a category is expected to grow significantly in the next decade, according to the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO).
Lonza said it has been actively developing novel characterization techniques based on single-particle analysis that are currently being implemented into the exosomes offering.
Senthil Ramaswamy, executive director of cell and gene technologies, R&D, Lonza, said the deals will help advance exosome development and manufacturing at the company.
“Exosomes represent an exciting new therapy and delivery platform that is gaining a lot of interest in its potential.
“Codiak has one of the most advanced pipelines of exosome-based therapies in the world and has developed a high productivity perfusion-based exosome manufacturing process. Lonza will gain worldwide access to their manufacturing IP and acquire their clinical manufacturing facility and will be able to provide services to third parties.