Batavia Biosciences is entering the commercial manufacturing game.
The CDMO said today that it has finalized plans for a new 12,000-square-meter building to be constructed at the Bioscience Park in Leiden, the Netherlands. The company expects the manufacturing facility to be operational around the third quarter of 2024.
The facility, which will feature six production suites, will support both late-stage clinical manufacturing and commercial manufacturing for vaccines, viral vector-based gene therapies and immuno-oncology products, the company said.
Batavia’s manufacturing technology, HIP-Vax, will be the main platform used there, and products will also be manufactured using traditional technologies. Depending on virus and vector type, the facility is expected to provide capacity for several hundred million doses annually.
The company's CEO Menzo Havenga said in a recent statement that the plant is a major step forward as the company “transitions from a CDMO that could assist its clients in R&D and clinic manufacturing only, to now, a one-stop-shop where it will be able to support clients from concept product idea all the way to full market launch and commercial manufacturing.”
Batavia has had big clients before. In 2018, the company was tapped to produce materials for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s replicating viral vector-based Lassa vaccine candidate.
The company has completed over 500 projects successfully, with a customer return rate of 70%, its website says. Just recently, Batavia produced a lentivirus vector used to treat the first patient in the Netherlands with stem cell gene therapy, curing a baby’s severe combined immunodeficiency disease.