SHANGHAI, November 8, 2023 – WuXi Advanced Therapies (WuXi ATU), a global Contract Testing, Development and Manufacturing Organization (CTDMO) congratulates its customer, Juventas Cell Therapy, on achieving China’s NMPA approval for Juventas’ New Drug Application (NDA) for Inaticabtagene Autoleucel (CNCT19 Injection), which is indicated for the treatment of adult relapsed and refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r B-ALL).

Unique CTDMO Model Accelerates Market Approval Process

As a crucial partner of Juventas Cell Therapy, WuXi ATU has played a critical role in the development and production of key raw materials such as plasmids and lentivirus. The services encompassed process development, support for the IND and BLA filings, registration testing, on-site inspections, market approval, and providing comprehensive CTDMO services to ensure seamless commercial production.

Since 2018, WuXi ATU has worked alongside Juventas Cell Therapy. In August 2023, WuXi ATU received the “Outstanding Supplier of 2022” by Juventas for WuXi ATU’s contributions in developing and manufacturing Inaticabtagene Autoleucel.

Leveraging the advantages of its CTDMO platform, WuXi ATU empowered Juventas to expedite the project across various facets and accelerate the approval for Inaticabtagene Autoleucel. It took only four years from IND submission to NDA acceptance.. As a result, WuXi ATU became the first Cell and Gene Therapy CDMO in China to pass a lentiviral vector on-site inspection by the Center for Food and Drug Inspection of the China NMPA (CFDI).

QbD Concept Embedded, Ensuring Process and Quality

CAR-T cell therapy, representing tumor immunotherapy, was recognized as the top scientific breakthrough of 2013 by Science. As a “living drug”, CAR-T cells exhibits high complexity and variability. Its production process includes (i) two key raw material production:  plasmid production and lentiviral vector production and (ii) CAR-T cell drug production, each of which involves multidimensional, multi-input, and multi-output factors. Therefore, from the initial stage of process design and development, Juventas Cell Therapy and WuXi ATU adhered to the concept of “Quality by Design” (QbD) throughout the drug’s entire lifecycle. The QbD process involves applying a scientific and systematic development approach to efficiently transform laboratory-prepared processes into GMP manufacturing processes that meet IND filing requirements and, ultimately, achieve BLA approval for commercial production. By applying the QbD, Juventas Cell Therapy and WuXi ATU considered the impact of key raw materials on final product quality, as well as its impact on patient efficacy and safety from the early stages of process design.

This approach attempts to mitigate future risks and the high costs associated with changes by doing the following: Fully understanding of the unique requirements for downstream cell products, setting quality target product profile (QTPP) for key raw materials, identifying critical quality attributes (CQA), systematically developing laboratory-scale process models for multivariate experimental research to determine critical process parameters (CPP) and design space, and ultimately establishing an overall control strategy. This strategy has been validated at the commercial production scale, ensuring the robustness of the manufacturing process and the stability of product quality.

About Juventas

Established in June 2018, Juventas Cell Therapy Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company powered by cutting-edge cell and gene technologies, has become the leader of innovative CGT drug development in China. Juventas’ innovation is stemmed from its integrated R&D platforms including CAR, iPSCs, and gene-editing technologies. With more than 10 drug candidates in its pipeline, featured with solo, dual, or multiple target autologous CAR-T and universal cellular products, Juventas is well on its way to fulfil its mission – providing novel solutions to unmet clinical needs in the treatment of blood cancers, solid tumors, and other diseases.

Beside self-driven innovation, Juventas is open for domestic and international collaborations, and has developed close partnership cooperation with China national top scientific institutes and clinical research centers, to diligently translate frontier science and technology advancement into bedside therapies/treatments.

In Nov. 2023, Juventas’ first core product – Inaticabtagene Autoleucel (CNCT19) was approved by NMPA, for the treatment of adult B-cell relapsed and refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL).

About WuXi Advanced Therapies (WuXi ATU)

As the advanced therapies business unit of WuXi AppTec, WuXi Advanced Therapies is a Contract Testing, Development and Manufacturing Organization (CTDMO) that offers integrated platforms to transform the discovery, development, testing, manufacturing, and commercialization of cell and gene therapies. Our services and solutions accelerate time to market and support customer programs around the world. For more information, please visit https://wuxiadvstg.wpenginepowered.com.