ScaleReady Awards Nearly $2 Million in Grants for Cell and Gene Therapy Production in California
Eight California research centers receive funding to expand cell and gene therapy manufacturing.
ScaleReady, in collaboration with Wilson Wolf Manufacturing, Bio-Techne Corporation, and CellReady, announced that eight G-Rex Grants totaling nearly $2 million have been awarded to recipients within the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Manufacturing Network (INFR5) program.
The G-Rex Grant Program is a $40 million initiative by ScaleReady to advance cell and gene-modified cell therapy development and manufacturing. ScaleReady has also launched a new free program in partnership with Hanson Wade called LEAN Cell & Gene™. This event series is open to all CGT entities and focuses on lean manufacturing principles, including reducing waste, stabilizing operations, increasing product quality and supply, and developing lean strategies for cell and gene therapy development and manufacturing. Learn more and register for the event series here.
CIRM’s Manufacturing Network program is designed to support non-profit academic GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) facilities to further establish California as a prominent hub for cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing.
The G-Rex Grants were awarded to the following CIRM INFR5 recipients:
- Dr. Dan Kaufman, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cell Therapy Program at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), received a $125,000 G-Rex Grant to develop a G-Rex-based production system for manufacturing novel virus-like particles for in vivo immune cell engineering.
- Dr. Taby Ahsan, Vice President of Cell & Gene Therapy at City of Hope, received a $300,000 G-Rex Grant to continue process development for G-Rex-based CAR-T cell therapy production. The first CAR-T cell therapy produced in G-Rex at City of Hope will originate from the lab of Dr. Xiuli Wang, also a G-Rex Grant recipient and professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope.
- Dr. Steve Feldman, Site Head and Scientific Director of Stanford Medicine’s Laboratory for Cell & Gene Medicine (LCGM), was awarded a $300,000 G-Rex Grant to develop a G-Rex process for manufacturing CAR-T cell therapies. The first CAR-T cell therapy produced in G-Rex at Stanford Medicine’s LCGM recently entered the clinic for GPC2+ pediatric neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma.
- Dr. Mohamed Abou-el-Enein, Executive Director of the University of Southern California (USC)/Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) Cell Therapy Program and Founding Director of the cGMP Facility, received a $300,000 G-Rex Grant to advance a novel non-viral manufacturing platform for CAR-T cell therapies.
- Mr. Brian Fury, Director of the University of California, Davis (UCD) GMP facility, was awarded a $300,000 G-Rex Grant to support process development and platform improvements for a G-Rex-centric approach to CAR-T cell manufacturing for both internal and external investigators.
- Dr. Brian Shy, Director of the Human Islet and Cellular Transplantation GMP Facility (HICTF), and Dr. Ke Li, Head of Process Development, Investigational Cellular Therapy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), received a $200,000 G-Rex Grant to improve their open-source, fully non-viral CAR-T cell therapy engineering platform. UCSF recently received FDA clearance of the IND application for their first non-viral anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy. The team is also working on an anti-CD70 CAR-T cell therapy from the lab of Dr. Arun Wiita, also a G-Rex Grant recipient.
- Dr. Dawn Ward, Medical Director of the Human Gene & Cell Therapy Facility at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), received a $150,000 G-Rex Grant to establish multiple G-Rex-based workflows for producing various cell therapy modalities at the new GMP facility. The first therapy is expected to be a novel invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cell therapy developed by Dr. Lili Yang, also a G-Rex Grant recipient at UCLA.
- Dr. Dhruv Sareen, Executive Director of the Cedars Sinai Biomanufacturing Center (CBC), was awarded a $300,000 G-Rex Grant to support preclinical development and IND-enabling studies for a novel CAR-T cell therapy targeting pancreatic adenocarcinoma. This therapy, developed in the lab of Dr. Joshua Sasine (also a G-Rex Grant recipient), will be the first CAR-T cell therapy developed and manufactured at Cedars Sinai.
For additional information about the G-Rex Grant Program, visit ScaleReady’s website.
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