OmniaBio, a CDMO focused on cell and gene therapies, debuted a new manufacturing facility it claims to be the largest of its kind in Canada.
The 120,000-square-foot site, which is located just outside of Toronto in Hamilton, Ontario, was designed to meet the specialized needs of cold chain logistics as well as the production of cell and gene therapies with the aid of artificial intelligence, the company said in an Oct. 17 press release.
The cost of the project wasn’t disclosed.
The company, which was formed in 2022 and is a subsidiary of Canada’s Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, said its AI-enabled manufacturing site will first focus on cellular immunotherapies and iPSC-based therapies.
“This new facility puts us in a unique position as a specialist commercial CGT manufacturing leader tackling the toughest disease challenges head-on by combining an experienced team with advanced tools and solutions,” Mitchel Sivilotti, OmniaBio’s president and CEO, said in the release.
The site’s first customer is South Korea’s Medipost, which plans to have OmniaBio manufacture its osteoarthritis drug Cartistem for North American patients. Cartistem is an allogeneic umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cell product used to treat knee cartilage defects caused by degeneration.
OmniaBio's expansion comes amid a wave of growth in the CDMO arena in the past couple of years.
Just last week, Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services and Afton Scientific announced plans to expand their sterile injectables manufacturing capacities to meet increasing demand.
Other CDMOs that have announced recent production expansions include Exela Pharma Sciences, Piramal Pharma Solutions and SK pharmteco.