Cell and Gene Therapy Manufacturing centre fit out expanding its Manufacturing Centre in Stevenage will help to facilitate the growth and delivery scale that is required to bring personalised medicines of the future to market.

The project will deliver three new laboratories and a mezzanine level. The proposal is to deliver quality control platform, allowing companies access to state of the art technology. All supported by Catapult’s expert quality control and regulatory knowledge.

Why?

The funding has helped provide new analytical technologies to be used in the quality control of cell and gene therapies.

To make developing large-scale manufacturing systems without the need for capital investment or the associated risk of building and licensing your own facility.

The centre will offer an invaluable opportunity for accelerating commercial-scale production.

Impact

The expansion of this project has helped the centre enable SME collaborators to scale up their manufacturing processes for clinical trial and commercial supply.

As well as helping the cell and gene therapy industry in the UK to currently support over 3,000 jobs, which is a six-fold increase since 2012.

Employment in the sector is set to more than double by 2024 as more therapies progress towards commercialisation.

The centre’s location also helps enable access to an established international inbound supply chain.

The expansion has led to more control of the manufacturing strategy and further collaboration with industry specialists.

Funding

Hertfordshire LEP has supported a £2.9m investment. A further £3m investment is supporting a new Cell and Gene Therapy Integration Laboratory at CGTC, exclusively dedicated to the provision of cell and gene therapy manufacturing training.

In 2018, Hertfordshire LEP helped the Catapult secure £3.36m funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Growth has also been accelerated by the Hertfordshire Science Partnership (HSP). This was set up by the University of Hertfordshire and supported by a £2.5 Local growth fund investment from the LEP as well as help to secure an additional £1.45m from ERDF.

This project was approved by the board on the 21st March 2019.