Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc. formally marked the opening of its $125 million, 136,000-square-foot cell therapy center at the Philadelphia Navy Yard last week, just days after it successfully manufactured the first clinical batch of its experimental cell therapy targeting solid tumors at the facility.

The company first announced in 2019 it would locate a new facility in Philadelphia, making the decision after exploring 59 sites in 10 different states. Philadelphia’s hospitals, research institutions, universities and the Navy Yard’s proximity to the Philadelphia International Airport influenced where it ultimately decided to build the center. 

“The Navy Yard was No. 1 throughout the process,” said Sumit Verma, senior vice president of commercial manufacturing at Iovance Biotherapeutics. 

The company’s cell therapy center is the first centralized, scalable, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility dedicated to producing potentially life-saving TIL cell therapies for patients with solid tumor cancers. TIL cell therapy uses a patient’s own immune cells to attack cancer.

The facility can be expanded by another 80,000 square feet.

“Our goal is to treat thousands of cancer patients a year,” Verma said.

The building was developed by Gattuso Development Partners and Iovance invested about $85 million into the project.

Offices take up a fraction of the new building with most of the space dedicated to producing the personalized, just-in-time cell therapy. The process to produce those treatments takes 22 days. The building was designed and outfitted with power and other redundancies so that nothing can disrupt that process or damage the treatment. 

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

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