Cell therapy CDMO Kincell emerges from stealth

Armed with $36 million in funding, Kincell Bio has emerged from stealth to help support research and clinical trials for cell therapy developers.

Contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) Kincell, a spinout of Inceptor Bio’s organization, has been launched with a focus on cell therapies. While financial details remain undisclosed, the firm said it has acquired a facility and a “fully staffed team” at its Gainesville, Florida site.

Kincell currently has 32 employees with two new hires expected to start later this month or early September. “We’re looking to scale our current hiring plan to add an additional 10 headcount by the end of the year to fill some strategic gaps and an additional 8-10 to get the facility ready for GMP manufacturing early next year,” Kincell’s CEO Bruce Thompson told BioProcess Insider.

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The CDMO has plans to expand its presence in Gainesville, as well as adding key markets to its pipeline in areas like Research Triangle Park (RTP) Boston, and various other undivulged locations. Kincell offers analytical development, process development, early-stage GMP immune cell therapies production, including allogenic and autologous Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T, CAR-NK, and CAR-M programs.

“With this funding, Kincell is in a strong position to work to complete internal development and transition the facility to cell therapy development and manufacturing (e.g., upfitting the GMP suites, obtain/supplement appropriate equipment to support process and analytical development, build out our teams and equipment) and reach GMP readiness, expand the team and onboard our next few clients,” Thompson said.

The firm also has in-house messenger RNA (mRNA) ambitions and aims to establish development and manufacturing capacity alongside building partnerships to ensure viral vector and plasmid DNA (pDNA) supply to support cell engineering processes.

Competitive CDMO market

2023 has seen multiple CDMO’s enter the Life Science space. Last month, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) has launched Lifera, a commercial-scale CDMO to grow Saudi Arabia’s local biopharmaceutical industry. In May, eXmoor pharma completed a $35 million Series A financing round to move the company into a full-service CGT CDMO.

And just a couple of weeks before this, NewBiologix entered the CDMO scene armed with $50 million in funding to develop a CGT platform.  

Thompson said despite the CDMO space being “crowded”, there is still “significant demand for partners with the expertise to help cell therapy innovators make the jump from bench to bedside, whether it be early-stage biotech’s taking a candidate to first in human, or more established companies looking to ‘de-risk’ innovative programs.”

He continued: “We believe our specificity of focus on early-stage immune cell therapy programs, our team of specialists and our innovator background, as well as offering a predictable financial outlay for a typically very unpredictable process of taking cell therapies into Phase I set us apart.”