On December 13, 2017 BioLife Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: BLFS), the leading developer, manufacturer and marketer of proprietary clinical grade biopreservation media (“BioLife” or the “Company”), announced that it has executed an agreement to supply its CryoStor® cell freeze media and HypoThermosol® cell storage and shipping media to Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (“Iovance”) (NASDAQ: IOVA). Iovance is currently conducting several clinical trials for tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapies targeting multiple solid tumor types including metastatic melanoma, recurrent and/or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck and recurrent, metastatic or persistent cervical cancer.
Mike Rice, BioLife President & CEO, commented, “We are very pleased to support the team at Iovance in their mission to bring potentially lifesaving cancer therapies to the market. It’s very rewarding to see our proprietary biopreservation media products being broadly adopted in the regenerative medicine market, due to the improved yield and extended shelf life our IP platform can offer our customers.”
Commenting on the collaboration with BioLife Solutions, Maria Fardis, PhD, MBA, President and Chief Executive Officer of Iovance, said, “As we advance into later stages of our clinical development, we continue building strong collaborative relationships with our suppliers and partners. We are pleased to have established this supply agreement with BioLife, assuring our access to biopreservation media for storage and shipment of our products using our Gen 2 manufacturing process, which includes cryopreservation of our final product.”
BioLife management estimates that CryoStor and HypoThermosol have been incorporated into the manufacturing processes of at least 250 regenerative medicine applications, including numerous late-stage clinical trials.
For additional information, please see our Press Release.