Catamaran Bio Inc., a biotechnology company developing off-the-shelf NK cell therapies to treat cancer, entered into a partnership with OmniaBio Inc., a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on cell and gene therapy, to develop and manufacture Catamaran Bio’s allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cell therapies for the treatment of solid tumors.

“This collaboration will allow us to develop scalable processes for the robust GMP manufacture of our off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell therapies,” said Alvin Shih, CEO at Catamaran Bio. “Catamaran Bio is pleased to have identified a partner with leading-edge expertise and a track record of success navigating the complex manufacturing needs of cell therapy. We are excited to work with OmniaBio to enable the development and manufacturing of our CAR-NK cell therapy as it advances toward the clinic to address solid tumors.”

OmniaBio, along with its parent company CCRM, is developing Catamaran Bio’s CAR-NK cell therapy process at their Toronto site, where the process development lab is co-located with good manufacturing practices (GMP)-compliant clean room suites to offer a seamless transition between process development and clinical manufacturing.

Accordiing to the company, the OmniaBio-CCRM partnership enables highly adaptable and flexible end-to-end support for therapeutics developers, such as Catamaran Bio, that need to move rapidly from development to the clinic and beyond.

“We are pleased to leverage our extensive expertise in immunotherapy processes, analytical development, and GMP manufacturing to support Catamaran Bio,” said Mitchel Sivilotti, CEO of OmniaBio Inc. “This work has the potential to fight solid tumors, an area where new treatment options are needed. We look forward to serving as an extension of the Catamaran Bio team to advance a promising CAR-NK therapy with the potential to address this unmet medical need.