Replies to post #4096 on GTC Biotherapeutics (fka GTCB)

[DewDiligence]

For biogenerics, to a greater extent than for branded biopharmaceuticals, squeezing every possible basis point out of the COGS line will be consequential. That’s what makes GTC an excellent fit for the FoB arena in spite of the improvements that have been realized and will continue to be realized in cell-culture yields.

[rustyboy]

Thanks biotechguy. I've heard and read some of the the same things. I'm not close to what's been going on in the cell culture world, but I remain skeptical that cell culture capabilites have closed the gap that much. Cell culture plants still require a fair number of trained people, a building, and lots of disposable inputs. While there have been many incremental improvements in cell culture I haven't read about exponential gains in output or cost reduction. There is a trend to go to 'disposable' manufacturing to reduce cycle times and sterilization but it is early in that process. Some things go the other way as I have read that the desired transition to non-bovine based serum will cause a decrease in productivity.

I could well be wrong but I remain convinced that the gap, while smaller, is still large. The scalability advantage remains as well. Of course, no one is paying me to make manufacturing decisions....

The analogy may not be spot on, but 25 years ago if you asked someone at IBM about PC's and IBM's future, they would have laughed. It was a 'mainframe' world then. I'm not suggesting that transgenic production will displace cell culture processing but it's easy to stick with the status quo--until a competitor starts to race ahead of the field.