Asimov

Asimov programs living cells to advance the design and manufacture of next-generation therapeutics

[Alec Nielsen @alectricity]

big news for asimov today: we're partnering with lonza on in vivo lentiviral vector manufacturing. i'm pretty excited about this one for a lot of reasons.

ex vivo CAR-T has now treated tens of thousands of patients, and many of them have been cured of their cancer. but it requires extracting and engineering human cells outside the body, which means every dose is its own batch. it's an impressive manufacturing effort, but it's hard to scale.

in vivo approaches skip the cell extraction step. you dose the gene delivery vector directly into the patient, and it engineers the target cells inside their body. this means one drug product can serve many patients, but the catch is that the vector is now the actual drug, not just a reagent, so consistency and a well-defined product profile matter a lot more.

traditionally, lentiviral vectors are made by large-scale transient transfection of a production host cell line, which is plagued by scalability and consistency problems. every cell in the bioreactor can receive a different number of plasmids, anywhere from zero to thousands.

stable producer cell lines take a different approach. they're clonal engineered lines with the production genetics integrated into the genome, so no transfection is needed during manufacturing. the whole process starts to look more like antibody manufacturing, which is highly controllable and scalable.

(as an aside, refactoring the lentivirus genome to gain tight control over the multi-step molecular process it encodes is one of the most technically impressive feats i've seen since starting asimov)

we're seeing order of magnitude higher titers and infectivity with our stable producer systems compared to transient transfection. with lonza, we're pairing that with their process development, analytics, and GMP manufacturing expertise to support drug developers.

we think in vivo cell and gene therapies are the future, and that they'll bring many more drugs to patients in the years to come.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Today we are announcing a strategic collaboration with @LonzaGroup to advance in vivo lentiviral vector manufacturing.

In vivo lentiviral therapies turn the vector from a manufacturing reagent into the drug itself, raising the bar for titer, product quality, and scale. While traditional transient production systems limit scalability and consistency, stable cell lines have the potential to enable scalable, reproducible and controlled product profiles for lentiviral vectors.

To provide developers with a scalable path from sequence to clinic, we’re bringing together Asimov’s LV Edge stable cell lines with Lonza’s expertise in process development, scale-up, analytics and GMP manufacturing. By connecting early design decisions with development and manufacturing considerations, we are creating a stronger foundation for clinical and commercial production.

Learn more here: https://t.co/MfnhB373T7

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Welcome back @AsimovPress!

[Asimov Press @AsimovPress]

It's official: We're back!

Asimov Press is returning with a sharper focus on intensive reporting in biotechnology. We're also working with @RenPhilanthropy to build our ideas in the real world.

See more: https://t.co/SEpahlZVAN

[Alec Nielsen @alectricity]

Pretty sure I have PTSD from reading The Hot Zone in middle school. Ebola is scary

Glad to be working with BARDA to rage against it

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

https://t.co/rfsbogXWK0

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Announcing our project with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to improve manufacturing of antibody therapeutics for Ebola and other deadly viruses.

This three-year project aims to optimize production of a monoclonal antibody cocktail targeting filovirus disease caused by Ebola virus or Sudan virus, which are associated with mortality rates as high as 90 percent. Asimov will use its CHO Edge system to amplify the production of mAbs against these pathogens, ultimately enabling greater availability of these treatments.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Our AI-driven cell line and bioprocess design tools consistently deliver 8–11 g/L titers for IgGs and complex multispecifics.

Join us tomorrow to learn how we use predictive modeling, rather than trial-and-error, to optimize biologics production: https://t.co/aRjpDMdLwz

[Corin Wagen @CorinWagen]

I'll be live-tweeting (live-posting?) notes from the Boltz-2 release event at MIT.

Initial observation: there's a big turnout! Almost every seat is taken at this event, which is rare for academic software releases.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Learn more about how we’re accelerating biologics development: https://t.co/9heRQUeKf7

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

We're parterning with Cytiva to help customers optimize biologics production, from mAbs to multispecifics.

We’ve spent years refining our CHO Edge platform in Cytiva’s HyClone media and feed, and now routinely achieve 7-11 g/L clones across biologic modalities...

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

By integrating our CLD with Cytiva’s Fast Trak process development and HyClone media and feed, we're offering:

✅cell line development (with a titer guarantee of 5g/L for mAbs)
✅cell culture media optimization
✅analytical and stability testing
✅scaling to GMP production

[Asimov Press @AsimovPress]

Edward Jenner administered the world's first vaccine, for smallpox, in 1796. At the time, smallpox caused nearly 1/5 of ALL deaths in London.

But it was the unsung scientists, Gaston Ramon and Alexander Glenny, who discovered adjuvants and made modern vaccines possible.

Story🔻

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

We're now shipping out the second book from @AsimovPress (the first commercial book sold in DNA + print). We're packing and shipping thousands of books today!

Here are some photos from our at-home assembly line. We think the final product turned out really well.

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

A human body is built from 30 trillion cells, which come in a multiplicity of shapes and sizes. The smallest cell, a sperm, fills a volume of just 30 ��m³, whereas an oocyte boasts a volume of 4,000,000 µm³, making it the largest cell in the human body.

Why the huge range?🧵

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

We're partnering with LOTTE BIOLOGICS, a global CDMO, to scale therapeutics manufacturing.

Our customers can now transition seamlessly from cell line development using our CHO EDGE system all the way to large-scale GMP production, with faster cycles.

https://t.co/5tjXXJ00Kd

[Alec Nielsen @alectricity]

Beyond excited to announce our deal with Novo Nordisk! Proud of our team who made this possible.

The market and molecular complexity of biologics are both growing. Cell engineering tech needs to keep pace to support production of next-gen biologics at global scale.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

We’re proud to share that our CHO Edge System has been licensed by Novo Nordisk, a global leader in healthcare innovation.

Forward-thinking companies like Novo Nordisk recognize the importance of accessing cutting-edge technologies to advance therapeutic development.

We’re committed to continuing innovation in biologics production and empowering our partners with the tools they need.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Read the report: https://t.co/WbHCKdsfpL

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Major biopharma companies, including Genentech and Gilead, are using AI models to find new medicines, optimize trial designs, and boost manufacturing efficiency.

We're featured alongside them in this ITIF report, which touches on some AI tools we're building for gene therapies.

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

Learn more: https://t.co/4nv0I2icsR

[Asimov @AsimovBio]

The F.D.A. recently approved Aucatzyl, a CD19 CAR-T therapy for B-ALL leukemia in adults. It joins a handful of other approved CAR-T therapies designed to treat various forms of cancers, including multiple myeloma. But it’s worth looking at Aucatzyl, in particular, because it has some unique aspects…

But first: CAR-T therapy stands for chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy. It’s a form of immunotherapy that modifies a patient's own T cells (a type of white blood cell) to detect and attack cancer cells. How it works, basically, is that researchers take T cells from a patient, engineer them to express receptors specific to cancer cell surface proteins, and then reinfuse those cells into the patient’s bloodstream. Once inside the body, the engineered T cells grab onto cancer cells and destroy them using cytotoxic mechanisms (like punching holes in the cancer cell membrane using perforins).

In the case of B-ALL, the T cell receptor that gets expressed binds CD19 — a protein commonly found on the surface of B cells, including cancerous ones. There are existing CAR-T therapies targeting this protein — including Tecartus — but Aucatzyl’s approach is distinct.

Like many other cell therapies, Aucatzyl uses a lentiviral vector to deliver a CAR-encoding gene into a patient’s T cells. But the CAR protein that it carries was designed to have a high dissociation rate. In other words, when a T cell engineered to express this “special” CAR grabs onto a cancer cell,  it delivers its cytotoxic payload and then disengages from the B cell more rapidly than other immunotherapies. This rapid release allows the T cell to move on and attack multiple cancer cells in succession — a phenomenon known as "serial killing” — which enhances its tumor-killing efficiency.

In a clinical trial with 65 patients, 42% achieved complete remission within three months of receiving Aucatzyl, with a median remission duration of 14.1 months. Severe cases of cytokine release syndrome — a common and potentially dangerous side effect of CAR-T therapies — were reported in just 3% of patients, which is lower than other therapies.

Unfortunately, all cell therapies are complex and expensive to manufacture. If we want these therapies to reach more patients, we’ll need to find ways to slash costs and make them at larger scales. At Asimov, we’re building a platform, called LV Edge, that combines wet-lab and computational tools to make lentivirus manufacturing and payload design much easier — and cell therapies cheaper.