Fresenius Kabi, TQ Therapeutics team to streamline cell therapy manufacturing

Fresenius Kabi, a global healthcare company with U.S. headquarters in Lake Zurich, Illinois, and TQ Therapeutics, a German biotechnology company developing cell selection technologies, have entered into a strategic development agreement to improve the scalability and efficiency of cell and gene therapy manufacturing.

Under the agreement, Fresenius Kabi has an exclusive license to develop, manufacture and distribute products incorporating TQ Therapeutics’ proprietary affinity- and column-based cell isolation technology. The technology will be integrated into Fresenius Kabi’s Cue cell processing system, according to the announcement.

The combined system is intended to isolate T cells from whole blood or apheresis material in less than two hours, producing high-purity cell populations for use in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. The companies contend the approach is designed to support more consistent processing, improve manufacturing success rates, and enable greater scalability for therapy developers.

“By integrating TQ Therapeutics’ novel selection technology into our Cue system, our aim is to improve manufacturing success and scalability — key steps toward supporting the advancement of cell and gene therapies,” Saurabh Bhasin, head of portfolio, cell therapies and contract manufacturing operations at Fresenius Kabi, said in a statement.

TQ Therapeutics plans to leverage the Cue system and the integrated selection column to develop ultra-short, extracorporeal cell processing workflows that could be performed closer to the point of care. The company said the goal is to simplify and accelerate treatment workflows for clinical applications.

“With Fresenius Kabi’s expertise in cell and gene therapy device technologies development and commercialization, and TQ Therapeutics’ focus on developing ultra-short processes for clinical cell therapies from manufacturing to in vivo applications, we are creating a novel value proposition for scaling and enabling the supply of cell therapies for broader patient populations,” TQ Therapeutics CEO Christian Eckert said in a statement.