Argos Partners With Saint-Gobain on Single-Use Components for Immunotherapy Manufacturing

Argos Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of fully personalized immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases based on the Arcelis technology platform, announced a collaboration with Saint-Gobain’s Performance Plastics division. Under the terms of the agreement, Saint-Gobain will partner with Argos to design, integrate, and scale production of a range of disposables for use in the automated manufacturing of Argos’ lead product candidate, AGS-003, currently being tested in a Phase III clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).

“We believe Saint-Gobain is the ideal partner to provide us with disposables that meet the technical specifications we need in the manufacturing of our personalized immunotherapies,” said Jeff Abbey, president and CEO of Argos, in a press release. “Their commitment to this development program and to Argos is a critical step in our effort to bring together all of the high quality resources and expertise we need to support the potential future commercialization of AGS-003. The utilization of their disposables with our automated production technology positions us to maximize throughput while processing biomaterials from multiple patients simultaneously in the same automated manufacturing suite.”

A reproducible, cost-efficient manufacturing process is one of the major challenges for personalized immunotherapy production, Fred Miesowicz, chief operating officer at Argos, explained in an interview that appears in the January issue of Pharmaceutical Technology. "Issues such as cross contamination and changeover of equipment are exacerbated when manufacturing personalized therapies," he notes in the interview. Single-use technologies provide a solution to these issues.