Recipharm, a leading global contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), and CanVirex, a Swiss biotechnology company developing next-generation oncolytic virus immunotherapies, announced a process development collaboration to support the scale-up of CanVirex's Vero cell/measles virus manufacturing platform. The companies have recently initiated the technology transfer of CanVirex's process to Recipharm. The collaboration is expected to establish the manufacturing foundation required for future clinical studies and long-term commercial scalability.
CanVirex is developing a next-generation oncolytic measles virus platform designed to combine direct tumour destruction with local immune activation. The programme builds on more than two decades of clinical development of engineered oncolytic measles viruses, providing substantial clinical experience for this therapeutic class. CanVirex's lead programme, an IL-12 expressing oncolytic measles virus, is being advanced for patients with difficult-to-treat solid tumours, including those tumours types that remain poorly served by current immunotherapy approaches. The collaboration began with feasibility studies led by Recipharm, to support cell and virus banking in static culture systems, establishing development cell and virus banks and confirming the suitability of CanVirex's Vero cell/measles virus system for further process development. Building on this work, the programme is now advancing into process development runs, transferring process knowledge and enabling optimisation of a scalable bioreactor manufacturing process based on microcarrier culture.
CanVirex selected Recipharm for its established expertise in virus manufacturing and its ability to offer end-to-end services for oncolytic viruses that require aseptic processing including large, unfilterable viruses.
Greg Behar, CEO of Recipharm, said: "This collaboration reflects Recipharm's commitment to supporting innovative oncolytic virus developers like CanVirex from process development through to GMP manufacture. Our experience with aseptic processing of large, hard-to-filter viruses makes us a trusted partner for CanVirex in advancing this important programme for patients with advanced solid tumours."
Dr. Werner Tschollar, Chairman of the Board of Directors at CanVirex, said: "Establishing a scalable manufacturing process is a critical step toward bringing our next-generation oncolytic measles virus platform into clinical development. Recipharm brings unique expertise in manufacturing complex viral therapeutics and provides a strong foundation for future clinical supply. Together, we are building the infrastructure needed to advance our platform toward clinical development and future patient benefit."