Novartis sells CellforCure to French company Seqens
Published: Monday, Nov 27th 2023, 17:10
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Novartis is selling its French production site for cell therapies CellforCure. The Basel-based pharmaceutical giant is selling the unit to the supplier Seqens for an undisclosed amount. The number of employees taken over was also not disclosed.
As a Novartis unit, CellforCure had a total of almost 200 employees. The CellforCure site in Les Ulis near Paris, which was founded ten years ago by the Laboratoire français du fractionnement et des biotechnologies (LFB) and acquired by Novartis in 2019, will be taken over by Seqens on December 1.
Seqens is particularly known for its future production plant for paracetamol in Roussillon, France, which was announced for summer 2021 as part of the project to relocate production of this molecule. The transaction "makes it possible to preserve the industrial facilities, maintain the know-how and secure a maximum of jobs", Novartis said in a press release.
The CellforCure platform, whose main competitors are located in the USA or Switzerland, is intended to "offer a local quality solution for French, European and American players", as Seqens emphasizes in a separate statement. In concrete terms, the aim will be to produce "on a large scale" on behalf of academic laboratories, research centers and universities.
Novartis acquired CellforCure to expand its production capacity for CAR-T cell therapies in Europe. CAR-T is a class of new therapies that revitalize the immune system by targeting cancer cells.
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