Cell- and Gene Therapy

Cell & Gene Therapies are likely going to revolutionise the pharmaceutical sector: they promise individual treatment or even cure where traditional medicine reaches its boundaries. In allogenic therapies the patient’s own cells are modified or stimulated to cure inherited diseases or to attack specific cancer cells.

The “manufacturing” of such therapies still faces many challenges, including a developing regulatory landscape, evolving technologies and fast paced medical innovation.

Pharmaplan has accompanied pharmaceutical companies, biotech start-ups, hospitals and other frontrunners on their journey in the field of personalised medicine with innovative process and facility design since the early 2000s.

This experience enables us to combine reliable pharma engineering and sound understanding of business context and regulatory expectations with the need for flexibility when it comes to process design, equipment selection for aseptic and automated processing and designing the laboratory type facilities in which Cell & Gene Therapies are manufactured.

One of our project references in this area resulted from our cooperation with Celonic AG, a CDMO (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation) for Biologics, which is entering the field of cell and gene therapy.

In 2019 Celonic AG commissioned Pharmaplan to develop a concept to create manufacturing capacities for cell and gene therapy at its existing Swiss site in Basel.

The concept was quickly approved and with Pharmaplan as General Planner Celonic is now building a state-of-the art GMP Manufacturing Facility for Gene Vectors and Cell Therapy in Basel. It will offer capacities ranging from process development and optimisation up to early-commercialisation, including clinical trial manufacturing.

Dr. Sönke Brunswieck, VP Zell- & Gentherapie, Celonic AG

Dr. Sönke Brunswieck
VP Cell and Gene Therapy, Celonic AG
My feedback on the collaboration with Pharmaplan

“Our team is very pleased with the cooperation. the highlights are certainly the high level of competence of each individual, reliability, commitment, communication, teamwork and the necessary flexibility. We are very happy with the progress and are looking forward to inaugurate our Cell & Gene facility this summer. With this we are taking a key strategic step within this fastgrowing industry by developing and commercialising Cell Therapy and Gene Therapy Products.”