Lonza and Sanofi entered into a strategic partnership in 2017 to build and operate a mammalian cell culture facility for monoclonal antibody production in Visp (CH). The large-scale facility, which utilizes 20,000L bioreactors, became operational in 2021.
Bacthera is a strategic joint venture (JV) which was established by Lonza and Chr. Hansen in 2019. The company is now a leading specialized CDMO dedicated to the Live Biotherapeutic Product (LBP) industry. Since 2020, it has offered drug substance and drug product development services for customers developing LBPs.
The company’s sites in Hørsholm (DK) and Basel (CH) both received manufacturing and GMP licenses from their respective national health authorities in May 2021, to supply customers with LBP medicines for human clinical trials and ultimately develop commercial products.
In November 2021, Bacthera announced a collaboration with Seres Therapeutics, a leading microbiome therapeutics company, to manufacture SER-109, which is Seres’ lead product candidate for recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (rCDI). SER-109 has potential to become the first LBP to go into commercial production.
Moving forward, Bacthera will continue to expand its offering, including larger cGMP batch sizes for Phase 3 and commercial production. The company’s ambition is to cover the entire drug substance and drug product supply chain for LBPs in an integrated offering.
As part of the Seres Therapeutics collaboration, a new Microbiome Center of Excellence will be located at our Ibex® Solutions campus in Visp (CH). With this new facility, Bacthera will offer fully integrated end-to-end live biotherapeutic development, clinical trial material manufacturing and commercial manufacturing services.
