NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[abeta]

[[21]] Advent has developed
methods to produce multiple years of doses in a single manufacturing
cycle which puts it at a competitive advantage.

This has led to
competitors being very keen to find out information about Advent’s
manufacturing process and, to date, Advent has not revealed publicly
what numbers of batches it has produced for a given number of
patients, nor how many doses its manufacturing process produces.
22. Advent considers that providing this information in response to a FOIA
request would enable competitors to “reverse engineer” the
manufacturing process and work out key information about Advent’s
optimized processes for manufacturing these products. That would
significantly damage the competitive advantage that Advent has worked
for many years to develop.

11. This request asked for the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) licence(s)
under which brain tumour tissue was procured and processed. Advent
argued that obtaining tumour tissue is essential for its business as
DCVax-L (a vaccine that uses patient’s immune cells to target cancer)
cannot be manufactured without a tumour tissue sample and there is
competition for tumour tissue. It argues that revealing the sources
would give an unfair advantage to competitors who could then be
competing for the same sources.
12. Advent further argues that, to be usable, the tumour tissue must be
handled correctly by the hospital from which it was obtained and Advent
Bio has had to train the sites to do this correctly. Revealing the sources
from which Advent has obtained tumour tissue would enable competitors
to take advantage of Advent having already trained those sites.

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