Lonza Announces Suites for Commercialization of Bioconjugates

Lonza today announced a long-term, strategic collaboration for bioconjugation with a global biopharma company. Under the terms of the agreement, Lonza will construct two new customer-dedicated conjugation suites for the commercialization of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) at its Visp (CH) site.

As part of Lonza’s Ibex® Dedicate model, a technology-agnostic supply solution that helps reduce time to market and control investment risk, two bioconjugation suites totaling 1500m2 of active manufacturing space will be built out within a pre-existing shell. The new suites will also benefit from established quality control (QC) labs, logistics and other central services, allowing for faster ramp-up times, assured delivery and high performance.

The high throughput bioconjugation suites will be capable of handling highly-potent materials for cancer therapies and will initially manufacture two therapies. The new dedicated facility will employ around 200 staff, with operations expected to start from the end of 2022. ADC’s are bioconjugates and represent an innovative therapeutic modality that is growing rapidly and providing effective therapies to patients with reduced side effects. ADC’s usually combine an antibody with a highly-potent payload (via a linker molecule) to target cancer cells.

The antibody serves as the delivery method to target the toxic drug precisely to cancer cells, limiting toxicity to healthy cells. Lonza has developed the specific expertise and technology to de-risk the development and manufacturing of bioconjugates and now supports the majority of commercially approved ADCs. In addition, Lonza also offers all elements of a complex supply chain, including manufacturing of biomolecule, synthetic payload, linker and subsequent conjugation at a single site.