“GE Healthcare is focused on providing “end-to-end" cell and gene therapy technologies to support customer’s production workflows in an effort to facilitate our customer’s ultimate goal: to make these therapies safe, effective, and widely available,” Phil Vanek, General Manager of Cell Therapy Technologies at GE Healthcare, told us.
The acquisition of Biosafe Group SA, a supplier of integrated cell bioprocessing systems for the cell therapy and regenerative medicine industry, expands GE’s ecosystem of products, solutions and services for the cell therapy industry - an industry which is seeing rapid growth.
“For the oncology market alone there are more than 300 potentially life-changing cell therapies currently in trials, and it is estimated that the market potential for personalized cancer treatments could reach $10B by 2021,” explained Vanek.
By 2030, the cell therapy oncology market alone is expected to reach $30bn.
Currently, there are 375 active programs and seven companies with a market cap of $17bn focused on progressing CAR-T therapies, according to Vanek, who described the pharmaceutical and biotech industry as “reaching an inflection point.”
“These cellular therapies remain key opportunities for the investment community,” he added.
Of those companies involved, Novartis is expected to bring the first commercially available cell therapy to market in 2017, “with companies like Juno and Kite vying for first market entry as well,” said Vanek.
For GE, Vanek explained the Biosafe acquisition “reinforces GE Healthcare’s on-going commitment to the regenerative medicine industry and reinforces our already considerable investment into the space.”
“This acquisition will help enable the production of these personalized treatments on an industrialized scale,” he added.