The contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), Cognate BioServices, announced that it has closed a round of growth capital from EW Healthcare Partners, which will support its short- and long-term growth.
The now-closed transaction between Cognate and EW Healthcare includes significant growth capital which will support the company’s commercial expansion project that began in 2015.
Specific financial details were not disclosed.
According to Cognate, it is one of the only CDMOs capable of handling the volume of personalized products that are being approved by regulators today. The company provides clinical and commercial development services for regenerative medicine, cellular immunotherapy, and cell therapy companies.
The company has commercial scale manufacturing capacity in Memphis, Tennessee and is continuing to expand its manufacturing footprint as the needs of its clients grow.
Kelly Ganjei, CEO of Cognate BioServices, stated that with this growth capital from EW Healthcare, in combination of its existing shareholders, the company can remain focused on the ‘aggressive growth’ it is looking to achieve to meet the growing commercial markets in cellular therapies.
In recent years, Cognate has also established strategic partnerships to enable its expansion. The company created a center of excellence through a collaboration with Terumo in 2018. The partnership saw Cognate integrate Terumo’s processing tools into its innovation labs.
Astero and Cognate also collaborated giving the latter the opportunity to tap into its cell thawing platform and improve product quality in clinical manufacturing. Through this collaboration the two companies established a center of innovation as well.
