Oxford Biomedica has landed some new cash.
The British gene and cell therapy biotech announced Wednesday it has secured an investment “just over” £50 million from the Serum Institute of India’s investment arm. Funds are expected to help Oxford Biomedica build out its 84,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and bring online several independent suites by mid-2023.
John Dawson“Serum Institute of India has played a big part in the fight against COVID-19, as have we, and we look forward to a strong and collaborative relationship,” CEO John Dawson said in a statement. “This investment will allow us to expand capacity at Oxbox at a time when our business development pipeline has never looked stronger.”
Dawson added that he expects the funding will create up to 120 new jobs.
Oxford Biomedica’s facility was originally built in 2019 and comprised 45,000 square feet, as well as four cGMP suites, two fill-and-finish suites and supporting areas such as warehouse, cold-chain facilities and QC laboratories. The company hopes the new expansion area can prove “flexible,” it said in the release.
Twist gets new partner to help build out libraries
In its quest to develop products based on synthetic DNA, Twist Bioscience now has a new partner to do so.
The South San Francisco company announced Thursday a collaboration with deepCDR Biologics, a Swiss firm with a proprietary mammalian display platform that aims to screen and identify antibody candidates through deep learning. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Emily Leproust“[D]eepCDR offers a unique approach enabled by deep learning to generate large panels of fully human antibody sequences,” Twist CEO Emily Leproust said in a statement. “Utilizing these sequences, we’ve built multiple fully human naïve synthetic antibody libraries.”
Specifically, Twist has been able to build an AI Hypermutated single-chain fragment variables library and a new coronavirus specific scFv library, Leproust added.
Oxford Biomedica sees new investment for manufacturing; Twist gets a partner to help build out discovery libraries https://ift.tt/3nZfYgm