As one of the chief players in the automated cell therapy manufacturing space grapples with a recent setback, another is making waves with a major commercial pact.
This week, Oribiotech unveiled a 10-year partnership with an undisclosed biopharma firm to integrate its Iro platform into the manufacturing process for an unnamed, commercial-stage cell therapy. Overall, the deal could yield $120 million for Ori in services, milestones, equipment and consumable purchases over the decade-long term, the company said in a release.
In holding back the name of its partner, Ori clarified in its statement that the company wanted to remain confidential “for competitive reasons”—a relatively common practice where contract manufacturing and related agreements are concerned.
The deal hinges on Ori’s Iro technology, which combines proprietary hardware, consumables, software and data analytics in a closed system to help automate the production processes for cell and gene therapies. Ori pulled the curtain back on its platform in May 2024 and last year received a coveted Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation from the U.S. FDA in a major validation of its approach.
Ori has touted the ability of its platform to cut down on labor and production costs for advanced therapeutics, while curbing processing times in parallel. The company is one of several, along with major automation player Cellares, bringing cutting edge production technologies to bear in a bid to reduce the complexities and pitfalls of cell and gene therapy manufacturing.
The core physical instrument for Iro, meanwhile, takes up roughly the space of a microwave oven, and the devices can be stacked both vertically and horizontally to increase capacity, the company has said.
With the new deal, Ori says that it will work to modernize its partner’s autologous cell therapy manufacturing process, with the ultimate aim of potentially expanding patient access to both current and future cell therapies.
The partners will work in tandem to demonstrate the comparability of the Iro process to the unnamed company’s existing commercial production process. The goal, according to Ori, is to build a “flexible and scalable manufacturing infrastructure” that can support both ongoing commercial supply and cell therapy capacity needs further down the line.
Since launching Iro in 2024, Ori notes that it has accumulated 23 partners, adding that the platform is “rapidly being adopted as the new standard in cell therapy manufacturing.”
Earlier this year, the company also passed a major milestone by dosing the first patient with a therapy manufactured on the Iro platform and released under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standards.
“The IRO platform was built precisely for this challenge: to give therapy developers the scalability, reproducibility and cost efficiency they need to realize both the clinical and commercial benefits of these groundbreaking therapies,” Ori CEO Jason Foster said in a Sept. 15 release. “Together, we are committed to ensuring that the appropriate patients have access to these potentially transformative therapies.”
Ori’s long-term manufacturing pact follows a setback for chief rival Cellares, which has taken steps to right-size the company after the loss of an unnamed, “large pharmaceutical customer” earlier this summer.
The company subsequently announced roughly 168 job cuts across locations in California and New Jersey, with a spokesperson telling Fierce in August that the company does not “anticipate additional workforce reductions associated with this restructuring.”
Cellares has kept the name of the partner close to its chest, though other outlets have reported that the customer who walked away was Bristol Myers Squibb. For its part, Cellares has stressed that the decision was unique to that singular customer, and the firm continues to stand behind its own automated platform.
At present, Ori and Cellares are largely dominating the automated cell therapy manufacturing field, as indicated by the breadth of contracts and funding they’ve secured, not to mention AMT designations from the FDA, according to a June report from data intelligence platform Tracxn.