MaxCyte inks electroporation deal with Prime

Prime Medicine will have non-exclusive clinical and commercial rights to use MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation technology and ExPERT platform.

MaxCyte has partnered with Prime, a biotech firm focused on delivering one-time curative gene therapies. Under the terms of the deal, Prime will have access to MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation technology and ExPERT platform.

In return, MaxCyte has confirmed it will receive platform licensing fees and program-related revenue under the terms of the agreement. However, no specific financials have been divulged.

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“Our proprietary Flow Electroporation Technology has been optimized and continues to be for over 20 years,” a spokesperson for MaxCyte told BioProcess Insider.

“The technology leverages the reverse permeability of the cell membrane in response to an electrical charge. Our technology is able to deliver molecules such as nucleic acids and proteins into cells. We are agnostic to the cell type, approach (allogeneic/autologous) and/or gene engineering technology. We enable the customer to use a single platform from concept through to the clinic and to potential commercialization in a GMP environment.”

The spokesperson added that its ExPERT technology platform has been used in more than 45 clinical trials. Moreover, following successful clinical development of the platform, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies in blood-based cancer.

It has not been disclosed where the work will take place but as part of the partnership process, MaxCyte said it will provide technical and regulatory support to Prime from concept through to commercialization. The spokesperson told us partnership support includes:

This is the 23^rd licence deal MaxCyte has signed with drugmakers. In January 2023, the firm partnered with Catamaran Bio, a company focused on developing off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cell therapies used to treat a wide range of cancers, particularly solid tumors.