CDMO OmniaBio on Thursday opened a commercial-stage cell manufacturing facility that has AI capabilities worth around CAD $200 million ($145 million) in its hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.
Mitchel Sivilotti“OmniaBio will not only help companies in Canada to accelerate therapies to market but also help overcome supply chain issues across North America, such as cost and efficient throughput,” OmniaBio’s CEO Mitchel Sivilotti told Endpoints News in an email.
OmniaBio has another CAD $380 million ($276 million) for additional expansions in Hamilton, the company told Endpoints.
For now, the new facility will house robotics, biosensors and machine learning to reduce the costs of CGT production and increase manufacturing speed. The manufacturer will use its AI equipment to make cellular immunotherapies and iPSC-based therapies, the company said.
The 120,000-square-foot commercial facility will be at the McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton. The site is in close proximity to the US-Canadian border.
The construction was funded by South Korean biotech Medipost, which purchased a 39.6% stake in OmniaBio in 2022. The new facility is also funded by OmniaBio’s parent company, the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), which is a nonprofit Canadian government-funded organization. Invest Ontario also provided funding for the build.
Medipost is also OmniaBio’s first client. OmniaBio will make its umbilical cord blood-derived stem cell therapy, dubbed Cartistem, for knee osteoarthritis, for potential future patients in North America. The asset is yet to be approved in the region, with its first approval in Korea in 2012.
OmniaBio has another site in Toronto for early-stage manufacturing and analytic services.