The deal sees Sartorius team up with Quad to offer the QuickGel CD3/CD28 T-cell activation platform to its cell and gene therapy developer clients.
The platform is based on a biocompatible dissolvable polymer which can be functionalised with capture or signaling ligands depending on the application.
This eliminates the need to use magnetic beads for cell separation and culture when developing cell therapies, which, according to Quad, helps, stop product loss in the downstream with removal of qualification steps and reduced operator time.
“The focus of the collaboration is to ensure our end-users have global supply and support during all phases of their clinical development and future commercial gene-modified cell therapeutics,” Chad Decker, Quad’s VP of Sales and Marketing, told Biopharma-Reporter.
“By collaborating with Sartorius, we now have the overall reach to more aggressively offer a new innovative technology to our global partners.”
He added Sartorius’s “reputation and mutual interest in the emerging cell and gene therapy market” made the firm the best fit as a collaborator on the T-cell activation product, but would not comment on the financial arrangements of the deal.
Like the other big bioprocessing vendors, Sartorius has been pursuing a number of its technology partners as M&A bolt-ons over the past few years.
However, when asked if this was a likely occurrence on the back of this agreement Decker said: “Quickgel production is a proprietary process that has been well defined in our new cGMP facility. All Quickgel derived products will continue to be solely produced at Quad Technologies in Woburn, Massachusetts.”