Northway Biotech Opens €61 Million Cell Therapy and Personalized Medicine CDMO
Northway Biotech is significantly expanding its development and manufacturing capacity with a new 3,500 sq. m facility featuring up to 20 independent cGMP manufacturing lines.
The first dedicated Innovative Cell Therapy and Personalized Medicine Center of its kind in the Baltic States has opened in Vilnius, Lithuania, marking a major expansion of Northway Biotech’s CDMO capabilities in advanced therapies. The Northway Group has invested €61 million in the new 3,500 sq. m facility within the broader BIO CITY III development.
The center significantly expands Northway Biotech’s established CDMO platform across mammalian and microbial biologics, gene therapy, and cell-based technologies, adding substantial new development and cGMP manufacturing capacity for advanced and personalized therapies. It will support biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, university hospitals, and research institutions and begins operations with its first customers already on board and contracts in place.
The facility brings together specialized infrastructure and technologies for the development and cGMP manufacturing of autologous and allogeneic cell-based therapies, personalized therapeutic vaccines, regenerative medicine applications, and 3D human tissue technologies. Its segregated manufacturing infrastructure enables multiple cell-based products and processes to be handled in parallel while maintaining stringent requirements for product identity, quality, traceability, and contamination control.
The opening also marks a significant milestone for Kamieninių ląstelių tyrimų centras (Stem Cell Research Center), the company operating the new facility under the Northway Biotech brand, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. Founded in 2011 by Prof. Vladas Algirdas Bumelis, the company has spent 15 years building practical experience in cGMP environments and systematically developing its expertise in stem cell research, cell-based technologies, and advanced therapeutic applications.
“Fifteen years ago, we did not have a €61 million center - we had people and ambition. Over the years, we have built practical experience, grown our team, and advanced our cell technology capabilities. Today, we are systematically taking all of this to an entirely new scale. What seemed like the future of medicine 15 years ago is now being created here in Lithuania,” said Vladas Algirdas Bumelis, founder of the Northway Group.
The new center will operate up to 20 independent cGMP-compliant manufacturing lines. It features quality control laboratories, advanced cleanroom systems, and segregated infrastructure designed for the manufacturing of highly sensitive cell therapies.
In personalized therapies, an individual manufacturing process may be dedicated to a single patient - their cells and their disease.
“We are accustomed to traditional pharmaceutical manufacturing, where a single process produces medicines for large numbers of patients. Here, in some cases, an entire manufacturing process may be dedicated to just one person. It is a completely different pharmaceutical model - and this is precisely the kind of medicine this center was built for,” said Bumelis.
The center’s services are targeted at international biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, university hospitals, and research centers. With first customers already on board, Northway Biotech will provide development and manufacturing services for advanced therapies from the new Vilnius facility.
