NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[hyperopia]

I’ll break it down. The Flaskworks’ news is a VERY BIG DEAL, so don’t let the muted stock reaction fool you. The stock price is being suppressed by entities that are against Northwest Bio in order to create uncertainty and doubt about any positive news, with the idea being, that the news can’t be that important if the share price hardly increased. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In a nutshell, this Flaskworks news means that when Northwest Bio receives marketing approval, they will soon after, be able to produce their DCVax product to meet very strict commercial quality standards, in large quantities, at a low cost, and they will have patent protection from all the other competition that will come along and attempt to copycat Northwest Bio’s cell therapy. The biggest takeaway is that Northwest Bio has now industrialized the production process of a cell therapy, and they will be capable of producing tens of thousands of treatments annually, and eventually ramp up to hundreds of thousands as other solid-tumor indications are approved, and demand increases.

Due to the lack of any updates about the Flaskworks’ system for over a year, the haters have recently suggested that Flaskworks’ development has stalled, and that Northwest Bio is still years away from regulatory approval for an automated manufacturing system. They say that if and when Northwest Bio does receive marketing approval from regulators this year, they will have to produce the product using the very expensive, inferior manual process, which means they will only be able to produce hundreds of treatments annually, and they may not get insurance reimbursement because it will be too expensive to produce, or they won’t be able to earn much of a profit even if they do. This PR put all those ridiculous lies to death.

Since the Flaskworks acquisition in 2020, Northwest Bio (actually Flaskworks and Advent) has in fact, been very busy developing the original Flaskworks MicroDEN system, which was designed as a bench-top device intended for clinical trial production, which has lower regulatory requirements, and turning it into a commercial system with biosensors that are capable of providing real-time feedback on culturing conditions, and the ability to adjust those conditions as needed. This is necessary for commercial production, which has much higher regulatory requirements. The prototype culturing system was first revealed during a presentation entitled, Manufacturing of DCVax-L Past, Present and Future by Dr. Marnix Bosch, Chief Technical Officer of NW Bio, at ASCO on June 4, 2022. (better pictures here )

Yesterday’s Flaskworks press release revealed that in the time period since that ASCO presentation, Northwest Bio (Flaskworks and Advent) have actually further developed that commercial system, which was capable of producing one patient’s treatment (10-12 doses) at a time, into an industrial commercial system that is capable of producing 10-12 patient’s treatments (100-120 doses) at a time. This is A VERY BIG DEAL. With this Flaskworks automated process, Northwest Bio will be able to produce tens of thousands of treatments a year. All of the current companies with CAR-T cell therapy treatments are capable of producing a single patient’s treatment at a time, and are only able to produce a few thousand treatments a year. They are currently unable to meet patient demand, with long backlogs, and rationing care, which obviously limits the revenue they can earn.

So this Flaskworks news means that when the Flaskworks automated production process is approved, Northwest Bio will have the only commercial cell therapy treatment in the world that can produce enough treatments to meet a very high patient demand, which means this company will become much more valuable because the potential available revenue just skyrocketed. What this also means is that ten times the number of treatments can be manufactured from the same cleanroom footprint of that first iteration. As I said in another post a couple years ago, I think this may be what Michael Bigger was referring to as “cleanroom disruption.”

This brings up another interesting feature that was discussed in the press release; that the updated system now incorporates another previously separate process, in addition to cell culturing. As I’ve said in other posts, the manufacturing process has three main stages; the separation of the monocytes from the other white blood cells in the leukapheresis material, the culturing of those cells, and then filling the final product into individual dosage vials and cryopreserving. This new system now combines the first two steps in one system so that it not only requires less manufacturing systems, but it also allows those steps to be enclosed in one system so that it’s not necessary to transfer the cells from one machine to another, which saves time, reduces potential contamination, saves critical cleanroom space, and cuts down on expensive manpower.

Some have have speculated or at least hoped that the automated Flaskworks production process is a part of the marketing application, and it will also be approved when the DCVax product is approved. Linda Powers threw cold water on this idea at the shareholder meeting a year ago, but because the marketing application took so long to finish, some still thought that in that extra time, the development work on the Flaskworks system might also be finished. This PR dispelled this speculation, because it said that final installation, validation, and testing of the system will still need to be accomplished before it can be approved by the regulators, and the marketing application has already been submitted.

So the question that many may be asking is: “How long until it is approved by the regulators?”

First, I think it’s important to note that some of the development work that has already been completed was, “producing finished DCVax-L products with substantially the same composition and percentage purity of dendritic cells, the same biologic profile and functional characteristics of the cells, and the same yield in number of doses as with the existing manual process.” So Advent has already demonstrated to their own satisfaction that the Flaskworks’ system can produce an equivalent product as the current approved method. Now they just have to demonstrate it to the satisfaction of the regulators. They have also already engaged a contract manufacturer to make the systems that will be installed and validated at Sawston which may take a few months to receive. Then the validation - the Installation Qualification (IQ), Operational Qualification (OQ), and Performance Qualification (PQ), will take a few months. Then, a few side-by-side runs for the comparability study, and gather and assess the data, and submit the Comparability Protocol to the MHRA which could take a couple more months. The MHRA should be able to review the CP within a couple months, but possibly longer if there are still staffing issues. (the EMA has a 60-day response time for this type of filing, but I’m unsure about the MHRA) If all goes well, it may be possible to receive regulatory approval, and begin automated commercial production with Flaskworks by the end of the year.

So, in summation, THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL!