Medipost, OmniaBio to enhance cooperation for CDMO business

South Korea's stem-cell therapy company Medipost announced on Thursday that its Canadian affiliate OmniaBio made a two-day visit to South Korea on November 30 to discuss cooperation measures related to the CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) project.

Mitchel Sivilotti, CEO of OmniaBio, and Michael May, CEO of Commercializing Living Therapies, a parent company of OmniaBio, were in attendance at the event.

In May, Medipost announced its entry into the CDMO business and acquired a 40% stake in OmniaBio, specializing in CDMO of cell and gene therapy. In October, it launched its CDMO business for cell and gene therapy products in Korea.

Executives of OmniaBio visited the Medipost plant in Guro-gu, Seoul, and toured CDMO facilities suitable for good manufacturing practice (GMP). 

The two companies discussed ways to cooperate in strategic CDMO projects linking North America and East Asia. 

OmniaBio has decided to actively share trade secrets for process development (PD) and quality management systems.

"It was a good opportunity to directly check the excellence of MediPost's CDMO facilities and manpower," said OmniaBio CEO Sivilotti. "We will  utilize MediPost facilities and the know-how, accumulated in the process of developing Cartistem, to expand into the Asian market." 

Developed for the treatment of knee cartilage defects, Cartistem is a drug based on allogeneic umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells.

An official of MediPost said, "We [Medipost and OmniaBio] plan to provide a one-stop total service that embraces the entire process of developing advanced biopharmaceutical products, starting from product development to commercialization, by combining strengths of each company.


Write to Jae-Young Han at jyhan@hankyung.com