Cryoport announced strong first-quarter financial results last week in its biopharma logistics support division.
“Our first quarter revenue increased 48% year-over-year, or 21% sequentially, to $4m,” CEO Jerrell Shelton told investors on the company’s earnings call.
“This was another strong quarter for Cryoport as we continue to ramp reported revenue from our commercial agreements to provide logistics support for Gilead’s Yescarta and Novartis’ Kymriah, the first two FDA-approved CAR-T therapies,” he added.
According to Cryoport, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent approval of Novartis’ CAR T-cell therapy for a second indication – to treat adult patients with relapsed or refractory (r/r) large B-cell lymphoma – will further drive expansion of its support to Novartis.
The number of Cryoport’s clinical trial contracts has also risen – the firm now supports 236 studies, marking a 22 increase from Q4, 2017.
In February, for example, Cryoport added TiGenix to its books when it agreed to provide logistics support to the latter’s Phase Ib/IIa sepsis study.
“We anticipate supporting five or six additional biologics license applications (BLAs) or European Medicine Agency (EMA) filings in 2018, in addition to Kymriah’s second indication FDA approval,” said Shelton.
According to the CEO, the firm anticipates growth in clinical trial support programmes – together with Gilead’s and Novartis’ commercial therapies – will continue to “fuel significant top line revenue growth.”
In February this year, Cryoport signed a logistics services agreement with McKesson Specialty Health to support the delivery of cell and gene therapies to patients at the point of care.
In March, Cryoport announced plans to increase its cold chain presence with two global centres, due to open in the first half of 2018.