South Korea’s SCM Lifescience has partnered with U.S. startup PBS Biotech to mass produce stem cell therapies on an innovative 3D bioreactor configuration with high-yield protein production.

According to SCM Lifescience, the two signed a contract on Wednesday and agreed to complete a scalable 3D bioreactor configuration to meet capacity of 80 liters of stem cell therapies by the first half of 2021. Unlike antibody medicines such as biosimilars, cell therapy products are scalable for global commercial production at a level of 80 liters.

The two began to run a pilot project last year to confirm process development for commercial production tailored to SCM Lifescience’s stem cell therapies based on PBS Biotech’s 3D vertical-wheel bioreactors whose agitation mechanism enables homogeneous mixing conditions inside the single-use vessel, while causing less stress to the cells. This leads to shorter culture time and higher production yield with reduced quality control costs than traditional 2D alternatives.

Above all, the 3D system has the advantage of being able to mass-produce cells with consistent quality, making it suitable for producing cell therapies, which are ‘living medications.’

SCM Lifescience said 3D cell culture is expected to bring a dramatic reduction of production costs with increased per-batch yield and scale which result in low quality control costs.

The Kosdaq-listed SCM Lifescience has a next-generation high-purity stem cell therapy based on a layer separation culture method, and an immune cell therapy using allogeneic CAR-CIK-CD19 and dendritic cells in its portfolio plus cGMP facilities overseas.

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