Dive Brief:

• General Electric's Healthcare unit (GE) has bought Biosafe Group SA, a Swiss supplier of cell bioprocessing systems for the manufacture of cell therapies and regenerative medicines, the electricity and aviation behemoth announced Wednesday.  Financial terms were not disclosed. 
• The addition will double GE's cell therapy staff and sales, bringing 85 new employees and roughly 230 new customers to the firm, reports Reuters. 
• GE has recently ramped up investment in this technological space, including venture partnerships with Mayo Clinic and a technological partnership with the Canadian government. The company expects the cell therapy oncology market could be worth up to $30 billion by 2030.

Dive Insight:

"GE is building a world-class set of tools, technologies and services for cell and gene therapy and Biosafe’s expertise and innovative systems will strongly enhance our customer offering," said Kieran Murphy, GE Healthcare's Life Sciences CEO.

Biosafe is headquartered in the Lake Geneva region of Switzerland, but has four separate offices or distributors in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. It's main line of products, the Sepax systems, focus on the automation of blood and cellular product processing for stem cell banking and regenerative medicine.

With the acquisition, GE adds bioprocessing to its growing cell-therapy systems portfolio. In April, GE's venture unit partnered with Mayo Clinic to launch Vitruvian Networks, a software company focused on integrating cell and gene therapies to the internet of things.

And in January, GE and the Canadian government announced the creation of a new Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies, a space in Toronto dedicated to commercializing cell therapy manufacturing technology. 

GE's strategy is to "develop a digitally-enabled ecosystem of complete tools, solutions and services for cell therapy aimed at accelerating the standardization, collaboration and integration customers need to bring these new therapies into mainstream clinical practice," the company said in its statement.