Lentitek And ViroCell Partner To Tackle Manufacturing Barriers In Next-Generation Cell And Gene Therapies

As cell and gene therapies evolve to incorporate increasingly complex genetic payloads, manufacturing limitations are becoming a significant obstacle in bringing next-generation treatments to market.

Lentitek Ltd has announced a commercial partnership with ViroCell, which includes the licensing of Lentitek’s proprietary technologies to support improvements in lentiviral vector production.

The partnership brings together Lentitek’s expertise in lentiviral vector engineering with ViroCell’s capabilities in GMP manufacturing. This combined approach is intended to support the production of more complex vectors required for advanced gene-modified cell therapies.

Operating across Edinburgh and London, Lentitek focuses on developing technologies that enhance the quality, safety and scalability of lentiviral vectors, which are widely used as delivery systems in cell and gene therapies currently progressing through clinical development.

ViroCell, based in London, is a contract development and manufacturing organisation specialising in vector optimisation and GMP production of lentiviral vectors for clinical applications.

With extensive experience in viral vector design and more than 200 completed GMP manufacturing batches, ViroCell has built a reputation for supporting therapy developers in refining vector performance to meet both clinical and commercial goals.

Commenting on the collaboration, Dr Adam Inche, CEO of Lentitek, said:
We are delighted to combine the technologies that Lentitek has developed with ViroCell’s proven expertise in lentiviral vector manufacturing. Current lentiviral vector production approaches can face significant challenges when confronted with the increasingly complex genetic payloads required for modern gene-modified cell therapies such as CAR-T. By combining Lentitek’s vector engineering technologies with ViroCell’s vector optimization and manufacturing expertise, we believe this collaboration will help address these emerging manufacturing hurdles.

Nicholas Ostrout, PhD, VP of Commercial Development and Corporate Strategy at ViroCell, added:
ViroCell has always differentiated itself from other CDMOs through a strong focus on vector design and optimization at the earliest stages of development to ensure effective and efficient GMP manufacturing. We call this objective derisking. Our commitment to building more intelligent and manufacturable vectors led us to the technologies that Lentitek has been developing to ensure that we continue to be the partner of choice for our innovative partners. Developers are continually requesting increasingly sophisticated vector designs, with larger payloads and polycistronic GOIs. We felt that Lentitek’s proprietary technology could further enhance our vector design approach and ensure we continue to maximize viral titers. We look forward to delivering these capabilities through this collaboration.

As part of the agreement, Lentitek will contribute design expertise for ViroCell’s proprietary transfer plasmid, as well as providing laboratory-scale production, testing services and licensed access to its lentiviral vector technologies.