Swedish government and industry boosting cell therapy and RNA manufacturing

Thomas Eldered, President Flerie Invest, Helena Strigård, CEO SwedenBIO and Ted Fjällman, CEO NorthX Biologics

A major deal was announced today as Flerie Invest, a biotech and pharma investment firm with offices in Stockholm and London, led a syndicate of investors in the $52m acquisition of Charles River Laboratories Inc’s DNA and protein manufacturing subsidiary Cobra Biologics Matfors AB, Sweden. 

The new entity, NorthX Biologics AB, will take over and expand the facility equipped to provide GMP-grade plasmid DNA and technical protein manufacture at commercial scale. 

The Swedish Minister for Business, Industry and Innovation, Ibrahim Baylan, revealed in a press conference that the goverment will allocate resources to strenghten Sweden as a forerunner in Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products and vaccines, which will catalyse R&D and manufacturing partnerships across the Nordics, EU and beyond. This will build upon existing capacities in the Swedish Life Science Industry.

Ted Fjällman, Partner at Flerie Invest - a SwedenBIO member - and CEO of the NorthX Biologics AB emphasizes the importance of many different actors in Sweden, Europe and beyond, working together to accelerate the scale-up of life-saving medicines based on innovative technologies like RNA, cell and gene therapy, proteins and microbes: 

- We aim to be an innovation hub that helps the already excellent research groups around Europe to take the next step towards commercialization and bringing advanced therapies to patients.

Helena Strigård, Director General at SwedenBIO reinforces that gene therapies are a core component of a revolution in medicine across a broad array of disease areas and we welcome this investment as it will help to evolve the manufacturing infrastructure for companies that work with advanced medicines. 

- The Industry is currently bringing transformative therapies to patients, which present new options in challenging disease areas. Key to this is the availability of an advanced, robust supply and manufacturing infrastructure and the industry demand for these services is high and growing.

Thomas Eldered, President Flerie Invest continues:

- We at Flerie Invest are looking to long term support and continue to invest in NorthX Biologics and we are very pleased to play a part in establishing an important hub for innovation in Matfors, Sweden.