Crown increasing cell line model capacity by 25% in UK
The Silicon Valley-headquartered Contract Research Organisation (CRO) announced plans to double capacity at a site in Nottingham earlier this year, but with growing industry demand for syngeneic models the firm will expand capacity further across all its UK sites.
“The massive current market focus on immunotherapies has driven demand for syngeneic models, as they allow test compounds to be assessed in immunocompetent models,” Mike Prosser, General Manager Europe at Crown Bioscience, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
In fact as 2015 progressed, Prosser told us it saw a “general increase in demand for services, particularly for orthotopic/imaging studies,” from both its European and North American customers.
“Over 20 new syngeneic cell lines are now available at Crown Bioscience UK, including popular cell lines such as MC-38 (colon carcinoma), CT-26 (colon carcinoma), Pan02 (pancreatic), 4T1 (breast tumor) and others.”
The firm did revealed neither the amount being invested nor the extent to which specific sites would benefit from additional capacity or staff but Prosser said overall “there will be a 25% increase in capacity.”
The Nottingham facility, operated by Crown’s Precos Division, developed the firm’s patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models which it says offers a more valuable resource for biomarker identification and preclinical drug evaluation than animal models.
Like the Nottingham site, the CRO’s facility in Loughborough has a focus on hormone-associated cancers, such as prostate cancer
“Providing predictive models of prostate cancer is an area of particular interest to us and our clients,” said Crown’s President Jean-Pierre Wery. “This expansion, combined with our expertise in patient derived xenograft (PDX), will allow us to bring some exciting new offerings to the market early in 2016.”
