In the quest to discover the next generation of personalized medicine treatments – groundbreaking approaches like cell therapies, viral vectors and a new generation of vaccines – GE Life Sciences is busy developing the tools to enable that discovery. If personalized medicine is a gold rush, GE Life Sciences is creating the shovels and pickaxes. GE Life Sciences’ solutions in this space are varied – from individual chromatography machines and imagers, all the way up to KUBioTM – a prefabricated, modular laboratory and manufacturing facility that can be shipped to site and installed in half the time of traditional construction.
In Canada, GE Life Sciences is working with a number of partners – from traditional pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies– to research and process development organizations. One exciting partnership, with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) and made possible by a Grant from FedDev Ontario, is now one of the world’s foremost centres for process development for cell therapies, bringing these treatments from small labs to scale-up manufacturing. Since its announcement in 2016 by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the facility opened in the MaRS Discovery District has quickly reached its full capacity. GE is now looking for further partnerships to accelerate and increase the size of this facility, and to establish a full-scale GMP production site for cell therapies, in Canada, in the next 5 years.
Canada is also the perfect location for KUBioTM development. While countries like China have made biomanufacturing a major priority, with more than six KUBioTM facilities installed, Canada lags behind due to regulatory and investment hurdles. This, despite a highly trained workforce and deep expertise in pharmaceuticals, has caused numerous Canadian companies to move to the US. GE Life Sciences is currently working with numerous partners both within government and the private sector to change that. By removing the constraints and difficulties of facility design/ construction, GE’s KUBioTM technology allows companies to get to what they do best: creating life-saving treatments.
While Canada is the perfect location for this type of work, visionary partners in government and the private sector must come together to see the benefits – both in terms of economic impact, but also in the health of citizens that will benefit from such treatments. In the coming years, GE Life Sciences is searching for new partners to continue the exciting work of bringing efficiency, and cutting-edge technology, to personalized medicine development.
