Cellular Biomedicine Group (Cellular) is a leading cell therapy company in China. It strictly adheres to industrial standards, and conducts cell therapy product development and clinical research with a focus on patients.
Cellular is a cell therapy biomedicine company founded by highly qualified and experienced returnee scientists and senior managers. It was listed on NASDAQ in 2014, which is the only Chinese cell therapy biomedicine company listed on NASDAQ and the first enterprise-led company to enter the CAR-T industry.
The main businesses of Cellular Biomedicine (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a company under the Group, include technology development, technical consulting, technical services, technology transfer, import and export of goods and technology in the field of biomedicine. From 2014 to 2018, the company obtained 20 export technology patents, and its total export value reached US$22,350,630.
Currently, Cellular owns two R&D centers, located in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, and Shanghai, China. It has three GMP production bases in Shanghai, Beijing and Wuxi, with large-scale production capabilities up to 70,000 square feet. The facilities’ design and management conform to GMP standards of China and the United States and they can support simultaneous operation of 12 independent cell production lines.
The company now has two cell therapy technology platforms: tumor immune cell product platform for cancer treatment and stem cell product platform for degenerative diseases treatment. The former platform covers chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T), T cell receptor T cells (TCR-T) and tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) technologies; the latter covers product development for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (KOA), cartilage damage, skin inflammation and asthma. On January 17, 2019, CBMG allogeneic human adipose mesenchymal progenitor cell injection AlloJoin® was approved, becoming the first stem cell product for knee osteoarthritis treatment in Phase II clinical trials approved in China.
In addition to the two self-developed platforms, Cellular reached a strategic cooperation agreement with the global industry leader Novartis in September 2018 to be responsible for the production and supply of the world's first approved CAR-T cell therapy products in China. Cellular’s successful cooperation with Novartis in the field of cellular gene therapy fully proves that Cellular has become a platform for global innovative biomedical technologies to enter China. That offers an opportunity for international pharmaceutical companies that cannot directly enter the Chinese market due to technical barriers and policy requirements.
It is believed that with the support of the government, more important CDMO cooperation projects will be launched in the near future. By that time, Cellular will become the largest cell therapy R&D and production center in Asia and even across the world, bringing in unprecedented value and social benefits.