Multiply Labs partners with AstraZeneca to automate cell therapy manufacturing
Multiply Labs said its modular approach to cell therapy automation reduces manufacturing bottlenecks. | Source: Multiply Labs
Multiply Labs Inc. today announced an agreement with AstraZeneca to evaluate the potential for applying good manufacturing practice, or GMP-ready, robotic systems to commercial-scale cell therapy manufacturing. The collaboration will focus on automation of industry-standard instruments used in cell therapy production using Multiply Labs’ robotic biomanufacturing system.
The goal is to enable scalable, high-throughput manufacturing while maintaining the rigorous quality and regulatory standards required for clinical and commercial use.
“Cell therapies are among the most promising, yet complex medicines being developed today,” said Fred Parietti, Ph.D., CEO of Multiply Labs. “Our mission is to make these therapies more widely available by increasing manufacturing efficiency and scale.”
“This agreement with AstraZeneca allows us to evaluate our multi-arm robotic clusters in a setting where we can combine some of the world’s best scientific and clinical expertise with our robotic platform to build the next generation of high-throughput, GMP-ready cell therapy manufacturing,” he added.
Four-armed robot maximizes pharmaceutical production
Founded in 2016, Multiply Labs provides automation to the pharmaceutical industry. It develops cloud-controlled robotics for the production of advanced therapies at scale.
The San Francisco-based company‘s newest systems use four robotic arms operating in parallel to run a broad range of cell therapy manufacturing instruments already in use by the industry. It said this architecture minimizes the need for process modifications while maximizing output in existing facilities, targeting higher productivity.
Multiply Labs claimed that its customers include some of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the world. The company asserted that its expertise is at the intersection of robotics and biopharma – its team includes mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, computer scientists, software engineers, and pharmaceutical scientists.
Multiply Labs builds partner network
This isn’t the first partnership Multiply Labs has made in its efforts to automate cell therapy manufacturing. In September, it partnered with Thermo Fisher Scientific. The collaboration is focusing on integrating robots with Thermo Fisher’s automated Gibco CTS DynaCellect Magnetic Separation System.
The Gibco CTS DynaCellect System is a closed, automated isolation, activation, and bead-removal system for cell therapy development and manufacturing. Together with fit-for-purpose consumables, it offers high cell purity, recovery, and viability.
By combining the Gibco CTS DynaCellect System with Multiply Labs’ robotic automation expertise, the partners said they hope to accelerate critical steps in cell therapy production by reducing manual intervention and improving process consistency.
In June, Multiply Labs announced a pilot collaboration with Kyverna Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing cell therapies for patients with autoimmune diseases. Kyverna planned to evaluate the automation of its cell therapy manufacturing processes using Multiply Labs’ robotic systems for KYV-102.
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