AveXis Directs to Catalent’s Paragon for Extra Gene Therapy Producing Capacity

Catalent has approved AveXis that, a Novartis Company to use its brand-new commercial manufacturing center near Baltimore-Washington International Airport as an extra site production site for its spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) gene therapy Zolgensma® (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi).

A collaboration contract was signed by Catalent and AveXis to ensure long term strategic agreement but has not been disclosed yet. AveXis will use the dedicated production space within Paragon’s Harmans, MD, facility, a 151,000-square-foot old warehouse that Paragon changed into a contract developing and a manufacturing site which opened in April.

Andy Stober, senior VP of technical operations for AveXis, stated that “We are pleased to add additional manufacturing capacity and technical expertise through this collaboration as we rapidly scale up product production,” and “We look forward to working with Catalent in continued service of the SMA community.”

Pete Buzy, Catalent’s president, gene therapy added: “This collaboration allows us to leverage our new state-of-art GMP commercial manufacturing facility and AAV development and scale-up expertise to support AveXis from the early development stage to this critical launch.”

Catalent added that Paragon therapy will also serve method development for clinical supply of extra viral treatments in AveXis pipeline. This collaboration of AveXis with Paragon shows Avexis’s interest in the field in looking far beyond the existing capacity to meet Zolgensma-related production requirements. According to a data by Boulder County Assessor’s Office AveXis has been reported to pay $30 million for the site of Longmont in a sale on April 2.