Frankfurt Bayer is building its own European site for cell therapy research for the first time – around six years after entering the business area. An independent research unit of the American group company Bluerock is being built on the Berlin campus of the pharmaceutical company, as Bayer announced on Tuesday.
The establishment of research activities in Europe should accelerate product development. So far, the cell therapy subsidiary Bluerock has been researching almost exclusively in the USA and Canada.
Bluerock is a key pillar of Bayer’s cell and gene therapy strategy to develop a new class of therapies and pharmaceutical innovations for the next decade. Bayer founded the company in 2016 together with Versant Ventures in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and took it over completely in 2019.
Around 200 employees work at the independently operating Bayer subsidiary Bluerock on cell therapies based on pluripotent stem cells, i.e. stem cells that can still be differentiated into different organ cells. Standardized stem cells are used, which can be used uniformly for many patients.
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Bluerock’s main project is a therapy against Parkinson’s, which is currently being clinically tested in a phase 1 study. For this purpose, stem cells were specifically modified in such a way that they develop into brain cells and produce the hormone dopamine. These cells are implanted in a specific region of the brain of Parkinson’s patients with the aim of compensating for the lack of dopamine that is typical of Parkinson’s.
In the second half of 2022, Bayer wants to start another global study with the cell therapy, which will also include German and European patients by 2023 at the latest. If successful, the new therapies will later also be produced in Europe.
Bayer wants to secure added value in Europe
In an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, Stefan Oelrich, who, as a member of the Bayer Board of Management, heads the global pharmaceuticals business of the Leverkusen-based group, sees Bluerock’s presence in Berlin as an important step towards further strengthening Bluerock’s global leadership position in the field of regenerative cell therapies.
For Bayer, it is a matter of using existing strengths at its own sites for Bluerock’s research on the one hand, and transferring know-how from the new fields of work to Europe in a targeted manner on the other hand, in order to secure future value creation here. “We have to make sure that we are not only involved in yesterday’s chemistry, but also firmly anchor tomorrow’s technologies at our sites,” says Oelrich.
Beyond Parkinson’s, Bluerock is working on a number of other cell therapies in preclinical research phases. These include potential therapies for certain forms of blindness; To do this, the US researchers are generating retina cells that they want to implement in patients whose retinas are damaged due to hereditary defects or other diseases. With this project one hopes to go to the clinic in the next 18 months, i.e. to start the first tests on people.
Oelrich also sees good progress in the cardiovascular area. The aim here is to regenerate destroyed or scarred heart muscle tissue using new muscle cells grown from stem cells
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