SK pharmteco said that its French cell and gene therapy (CGT) contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) subsidiary Yposkesi has completed its second plant, allowing the company to secure the largest CGT production capacity in Europe.
According to the company, the second plant, located in Genopole, France's largest bio-cluster, is a 5,000-square-meter facility designed per European and U.S. current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) guidelines.
In addition to the first plant, which is also 5,000 square meters, Yposkesi now has a total of 10,000 square meters of facilities, which is the largest in Europe.
The second plant will produce adeno-associated virus (AAV) and lentiviral vector (LV), the most common viral vectors used in CGT therapies, from clinical to commercial scale.
Viral vectors are carriers that deliver genes to target cells and the body, with AAV being used primarily for gene therapy and LV for cell therapy.
In addition, Yposkesi has launched its own production platform, LentiSure, which significantly improves the production efficiency of LV, and is now targeting the anticancer and immune cell therapy markets.
The launch of the new platform comes after the demand for LV has been increasing significantly with the growth of the CAR-T cell therapy market. Yposkesi has secured both the quality and productivity of LV based on its high-yield cell culture and harvesting capabilities, and cost competitiveness.
Based on its ability to produce high-quality viral vectors in large-scale commercial production, SK pharmteco stressed that Yposkesi has already signed a number of production contracts for plant 2, and will begin full-scale mass production in 2024.
"The completion of our state-of-the-art second plant significantly enhances our competitiveness in terms of time, cost and quality," Yposkesi CEO Alain Lamproye said. "We will be able to meet the rapidly growing demand for CGT therapeutics."
SK Bio Investment Center head Kim Yeon-tae also said, "We expect Yposkesi to become a leading global CGT therapeutics CDMO by creating synergies with CBM, a U.S. CGT therapeutics CDMO in which SK pharmteco is the second largest shareholder."
Meanwhile, unlike other Korean conglomerates like Samsung and Lotte focusing on the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) CDMO business, SK has been investing heavily in the CGT CDMO business.
SK Group established SK pharmteco in 2019 as an integrated global CDMO.
SK pharmteco acquired Yposkesi to enter the CGT CDMO market in earnest in 2021, and also became the second largest shareholder of CBM, a U.S. CGT CDMO company, in 2022, and has secured CGT therapeutics production facilities in Europe and the United States.
The company currently has seven production facilities and five R&D centers in the U.S., Europe, and Korea.
SK's active investment is based on high expectations that the market will grow exponentially in the future.
According to Marketsandmarkets, a global market research firm, the viral vector market is expected to grow from $5.5 billion in 2023 to $12.8 billion in 2028, with an annual average growth of 18 percent.
While the demand for viral vectors continues to grow, only a few companies with cGMP facilities capable of producing them at a large scale, which SK expects will help them gain the upper hand when expanding market share.