MaxCyte signs strategic partnership with Celularity

Cell-based therapy developer MaxCyte announced the signing of a strategic platform licence with clinical-stage biotechnology company Celularity on Tuesday.

The AIM-traded firm said Celularity would obtain non-exclusive rights to use its ‘Flow Electroporation’ technology and ‘ExPERT’ platform, enabling Celularity to accelerate the development of “innovative, off-the-shelf” allogeneic cell therapies.

Those would include genetically-modified natural killer (NK) cell therapies and CAR T-cell therapies, derived from the postpartum placenta.

In return, MaxCyte would be entitled to platform licensing fees and programme-related milestone payments.

“Celularity's approach to developing new immunotherapies to treat cancer and other diseases appears very promising,” said MaxCyte president and chief executive officer Doug Doerfler.

“The company is leading the next evolution in cellular medicine by leveraging a novel cell source, and we are very proud the team has selected MaxCyte's technology to help enable this important work.”

MaxCyte said its ExPERT instrument portfolio represented the “next generation” of clinically-validated electroporation technology for “complex and scalable” cell engineering.

“This strategic relationship provides Celularity with access to MaxCyte's unique electroporation technology platform, representing an important enabling step in allogeneic cell therapy,” said Celularity founder, chair and chief executive officer Robert Hariri.

“We expect to leverage this transaction and our new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to advance the delivery of best-in-class cell therapies to patients with unmet medical needs.

“We are very excited to be working with MaxCyte, an established leader in cell engineering.”

At 1235 BST, shares in MaxCyte were down 3.54% at 872p.