Galapagos and BCA collaborating for U.S.-based CAR-T manufacturing network

Galapagos and Blood Centers of America, BCA, announced that they have entered into a strategic collaboration for the decentralized manufacturing of Galapagos’ CAR-T cell therapies through BCA’s network in the U.S. Under the terms of the collaboration agreement, BCA will provide access to its extensive network of over 50 community blood centers in 43 states for Good Manufacturing Practice compliant manufacturing for Galapagos’ CAR-T hemato-oncology clinical program. ..”Our collaboration with Blood Centers of America marks a major milestone for Galapagos’ U.S. expansion by establishing centers for support of our pivotal studies, with the potential to be used for commercial introduction. Working with BCA’s extensive nationwide network allows us to efficiently scale up decentralized CAR-T therapy manufacturing across the U.S., while their established infrastructure helps us harmonize operations and access apheresis capacity,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels1, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Galapagos. “This agreement complements the existing collaborations between Galapagos and Landmark Bio and Thermo Fisher Scientific and translates to a significant step forward in our aspiration to bring CAR-T therapies to more patients with a vein-to-vein time of just seven days.”