CDMO Skyepharma inked a deal to build what is being touted as the largest microbiome production facility in France for the clinical-stage biotech MaaT Pharma.
The facility, which MaaT said would increase its manufacturing capacity 10-fold, is planned to start with an area of 1,500 square meters and could grow to 3,000 square meters for any future needs. The plant will be constructed in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near Lyon and is slated to be completed by 2023.
Financial details of the Skyepharma MaaT deal weren’t disclosed. List Biotherapeutics, a microbiome player owned by South Korean immunotherapy developer Genome, announced in November it was spending $125 million to build a 110,000-square-foot microbiome facility in Fishers, Indiana.
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When completed, the French plant is expected to produce several thousand enemas of MaaT’s lead candidate (MaaT013), which is focused on graft versus host disease, a condition that happens when donor bone marrow or stem cells attack the recipient. MaaT also wants to manufacture hundreds of thousands of its second drug candidate—MaaT033—which is designed to improve survival in patients getting allogeneic stem cell transplants.
"This partnership is fully in line with France's ambition, as stated in the 2030 innovation plan for health, to become a nation at the forefront of biotherapies and ensure health independence in biomanufacturing,” Hervé Affagard, co-founder and chief executive of MaaT, said in a statement.
The microbiome market, which is expected to grow beyond $1 billion in the coming years, is attracting more attention and investment.
RELATED: Seres Therapeutics taps Bacthera to manufacture its lead microbiome therapy at Lonza's Swiss campus
Around the same time List made its announcement, Seres Therapeutics inked an agreement with CDMO Bacthera to produce its lead microbiome-based treatment at Lonza’s expanding manufacturing facility in Visp, Switzerland.
A month earlier, Scottish biopharma EnteroBiotix said it was building a 20,000-square-foot microbiome manufacturing facility. In September 2020, Arranta Bio, a fledgling CDMO, completed construction on a $100 million expansion effort focused on live biotherapeutic products.