October 31, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Swiss biopharma Novartis said this week it will be leasing a 80,000 square foot building in King of Prussia, Pa., which may be part of its recently announced partnership with the University of Pennsylvania to research cell therapies.
In September the University of Pennsylvania announced plans to partner with Novartis to build a new Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics (CACT) as part of its Penn Medicine campus in Philadelphia. Frontloaded with a $20 million investment, it is expected to create 100 jobs. The CACT’s research and development focus is Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) technology.
This partnership is linked to another University of Pennsylvania-Novartis alliance. In August 2012 the university and pharmaceutical company inked a global research and licensing agreement to research and commercialize cellular immunotherapies that use CAR technology.
CAR technology utilizes a patient’s own T cells, which are removed from the body and reprogramed to target specific types of cancer cells. They are then injected back into the patient’s body and, if all goes as planned, the T cells attack and destroy the existing cancer cells. In July 2014 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Penn’s CTL019, an investigational CAR therapy, breakthrough designation.
It isn’t clear if the new facility has anything to do with the CACT, although it’s clear that Novartis is developing a presence in Pennsylvania. In April 2014 Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline partnered to create a new consumer healthcare business. Novartis acquired GSK’s oncology lines for $14.5 billion, with an additional $1.5 billion dependent on meeting development milestones. GSK, in return, paid $7.1 billion and additional royalties for Novartis’ vaccines business, minus its influenza business. GSK has a significant presence in Pennsylvania, with its U.S. headquarters located in Philadelphia Navy Yard, as well as in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
As part of the GSK-Novartis realignment, as well as with deals with Eli Lilly and Company , based in Indianapolis, the company announced on Oct. 8 that three executives were leaving as members of the Executive Committee of Novartis (ECN). In April 2014 Eli Lilly acquired Novartis Animal Health for about $5.4 billion, which will be merged into Lilly’s animal health division, Elanco.
George Gunn, head of Novartis Animal Health will retire in July 2015. Brian McNamara, head of Novartis OTC, moved to GSK as head of Americas and Europe for the consumer health businesses. Andrin Oswald, head of Novartis Vaccines, left Novartis to pursue other interests.
