NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[hyperopia]

This idea that Big Pharma will “buy & bury” (like catch & kill) has been around for some time, and may have been true at one time, but would not happen with DCVax today. Five years ago, the first dendritic cell therapy for prostate cancer, Provenge, was mostly manufactured manually and it was too expensive; it was ~$95k per treatment (and required 3), and the cost of sales was around 50%, The personalized medicine model has not been preferred by BP, but that is changing with the willingness of insurance to cover the staggering costs of Kymriah and Yescarta. That Kite, Juno, and other CAR-T bio’s were snapped up and not buried should be enough evidence.

I would estimate the costs to produce DCVax manually for the clinical trial was ~$100k per batch, and Linda knew this cost would not be commercially feasible. But, I believe Linda’s plea for help in lowering the cost of manufacturing has been answered. Based on the companies Cognate has been collaborating with, FloDesign Sonics on the upstream processing (cell selection, purification, etc), and Terumo BCT on the downstream processing (final washing and concentration following expansion, and final preparation for cryopreservation) the manufacturing process for DCVax-L has been mostly automated and should easily be profitable when produced at commercial scale. I would estimate costs around $40k per batch at startup (not including logistics), lowering to ~$30k at full scale. While I think the treatment would likely be offered less expensively by Northwest Bio than say Merck, I still think it will be made be available to everyone just as Linda, Dr. Ashkan, et al. requested.