Dive Brief:
- Florida-based CDMO Brammer Bio, which contracts with companies to mass-produce their gene and cell therapies, is moving its headquarters to Lexington, MA, where it plans to open a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and hire up to 200 workers.
- Brammer Bio is keeping its process development facility in Florida, but will handle of all the manufacturing for phase 3 trials and commercial supply in Lexington.
- The founders, CEO Mark Bramforth and Steven Kasok, have been looking to build out a gene-therapy manufacturing facility in Massachusetts near the Cambridge hub since early last year.
Dive Insight:
As gene therapy development efforts start to yield results and move towards approval, Brammer Bio has made a strategic decision to position itself near the companies that are likely to be most active in the relatively near term.
As it moves its to the Cambridge hub, Brammer is near the frontrunners in gene therapy development, including Homology Med, with headquarters in Lexington; Cambridge-based Bluebird Bio and CRISPR Therapeutics and Editas Med, both which are also based in Cambridge.
“With gene therapy, companies are now conducting clinical trials, which we’ve participated in and supported. We’re on the cusp of this being a big change in our industry after a couple decades of research," Bramforth said. "Over the course of the next two to five years, we will see quite a number of products come to market and drive a change in patient health care.”