Under the terms of the deal with Codiak, the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of exosome-based therapeutics will retain its pipeline of therapeutic candidates as well as its exosome engineering and drug-loading technologies.

For $65 million, Codiak will receive GMP manufacturing services in kind from Lonza, which in turn will gain worldwide access and sub-licensable rights to the US clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company’s pioneering exosome-based therapeutics high-throughput perfusion-based cGMP process for exosome manufacturing.

Together, the two firms plan to establish a Center of Excellence for the development of exosome manufacturing technologies. This, Lonza said, will leverage the strengths of both players to advance developments in exosome production, purification and analytics while providing customers of the Basel-based CDMO with exosome assay and process development, analytics and manufacturing services.

Exosomes are emerging as a new modality for advanced therapies and could become the next frontier in biotherapeutics, said Lonza senior vice president Alberto Santagostino, who heads Lonza’s Cell and Gene Technologies unit. The arrangement with Codiak, he commented, is not only consistent with Lonza’s strategy to advance this technology. It also will benefit the entire industry.

The nano-sized membrane vesicles secreted by many cell types play a role in cell-to-cell communication and, as Lonza explains, represent clinically valuable tools for applications ranging from early detection, diagnosis, prognosis and targeted treatments. Further development of the exosome platform also has the potential to make cell and gene therapies available and commercially viable for large patient populations, the CDMO believes.

Codiak, which went public last year, already has two engineered exosome therapeutic candidates in clinical studies in patients and plans to file a third investigational new drug application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a third candidate during the current fourth quarter.

Acquisition of Exosomics service unit in Italy

In a second deal, for which financial terms were not disclosed, Lonza is acquiring the Siena, Italy-based service unit of Exosomics, an extracellular vesicles (EV) biotech. The Swiss company has been a minority shareholder of Exosomics since 2017 and will retain an interest after the acquisition.

With this purchase, Lonza will gain access to expertise and capabilities in EV analytics and characterization. In addition to R&D, it intends to expand service offerings from the site to a “comprehensive suite” of development and analytical services for exosomes. This acquisition, the company  said, is designed to strengthen its position as a “leading global CDMO in exosomes bioprocessing.”

Commenting that Lonza's acquisition reaffirms the recognition for his company as as a key player in Europe in the field of exosomes sciences, CEO Antonio Chiesi said Exosomics “will now focus on its original goal of pan-cancer screening and liquid biopsy applications in human diseases, still supported by Lonza as its most important industrial shareholder."

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist