New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), a New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Corporation, has signed an Industry Participation Agreement with Pall Corporation to support the development of its BioPharmaceutical Innovation iLab.
 
The partnership will support two key centers at NJII that will advance the manufacturing of new cell and gene therapies: the Cell and Gene Therapy Development Center and the Center of Advanced Biologic Manufacturing.
 
“We are excited to work with Pall Corporation, a world leader in high-tech filtration, separation and purification, to advance manufacturing of new cell and gene therapies,” said Haro Hartounian, senior executive director, biotechnology and pharmaceutical innovation, NJII. “These therapies represent a new era in the treatment of cancer and other major diseases and hold great promise in achieving successful patient outcomes.”
 
The NJII Cell and Gene Therapy Development Center will focus on addressing manufacturing process technologies and workforce development challenges faced by the industry. This center will serve as a dedicated platform where the industry can access shared resources including equipment, expertise and project work to find innovative solutions to manufacturing needs for biologic medicines, such as cell-based immunotherapies.
 
The NJII Center of Advanced Biologic Manufacturing, meanwhile, will address challenges of mass production through continuous processing and viral vector manufacturing. This center will bring big pharma, emerging biotechnology companies, technology developers and instrumentation companies together with regulatory agencies to pioneer new techniques and train those who will take the technology into commercial practice at an industrial scale.
 
A leader in continuous bioprocessing, Pall is at the forefront of research and development in the industrialization of gene therapy manufacture and brings new resources to both projects. State-of-the-art bioreactors, continuous chromatography units, and an acoustic wave separator have been provided by Pall to both NJII Centers as part of the Industry Participation Agreement. Pall experts will also be deployed to support the experimental program and provide training on the new equipment.
 
Peter Levison, executive director business development, Pall, said, “Scaling up the manufacture of gene therapies and gene-modified cell therapies to industrial levels is one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine manufacture. If we’re going to tackle the industry’s productivity challenges, we need to think smart and invest in finding innovative manufacturing solutions, for example through continuous bioprocessing. NJII is doing remarkable work in this area and we’re very excited to partner with them on this innovative program.”