Vector Manufacturing Market: Opinion Leaders Highlight Key Concerns

The growing pipeline of cell and gene therapies has led to an increase in demand for high-quality gene delivery vehicles and, therefore, has created significant opportunities for companies with expertise in manufacturing viral and non-viral vectors. In an article published last year, I discussed the growing cell and gene therapy market and how it has positively influenced the growth of the vector manufacturing market.

The current vector manufacturing landscape comprises of several players that claim to have the capability to develop vectors for cell and gene therapies. The infographic below summarizes the key facts associated with the vector contract manufacturing market.

In a recent market research report, Roots Analysis interviewed several key stakeholders in the vector manufacturing market to understand the key challenges that the industry is currently facing. The key stakeholders interviewed are:

1. Menzo Havenga (Chief Executive Officer and President, Batavia Biosciences)
2. Nicole Faust (Chief Executive Officer & Chief Scientific Officer, CEVEC Pharmaceuticals)
3. Jeffrey Hung (Chief Commercial Officer, Vigene Biosciences)
4. Olivier Boisteau (Co-Founder / President, Clean Cells)
5. Laurent Ciavatti (Business Development Manager, Clean Cells)
6. Xavier Leclerc (Head of Gene Therapy, Clean Cells)
7. Joost van den Berg (Director, Amsterdam BioTherapeutics Unit)
8. Bakhos A Tannous (Director, MGH Viral Vector Development Facility, Massachusetts General Hospital)
9. Colin Lee Novick (Managing Director, CJ Partners)
10. Cedric Szpirer (Executive & Scientific Director, Delphi Genetics)
11. Semyon Rubinchik (Scientific Director, ACGT)
12. Alain Lamproye (President of Biopharma Business Unit, Novasep)
13. Astrid Brammer (Senior Manager Business Development, Richter-Helm)
14. Brain M Dattilo (Business Development Manager, Waisman Biomanufacturing)
15. Marco Schmeer (Project Manager, Plasmid Factory)
16. Tatjana Buchholz (Marketing Manager, Plasmid Factory)
17. Nicolas Grandchamp (R&D Leader, GEG Tech)

In addition, the team conducted surveys with different players involved in the vector manufacturing space. The figure below summarizes the details of the players involved in the survey.

The key trends that the team unfolded in the discussions are highlighted below:

1. Cost of manufacturing viral vectors is still significantly high
2. There are several challenges associated with production output
3. Stringent regulatory requirements exist for conducting human clinical trials
4. The industry is facing concerns realted to final product contamination
5. There is a need for changes in the operational models to sustain market growth
6. The industry has witnessed a growing preference to outsource vector manufacturing operations
7. Different players are contantly expanding capacity to accomodate for commercial scale operations
8. This space has also seen the rise of spin offs/startups from the academic sector
9. Some of the players are on the lookout for novel vectors based on transposons and sendai virus to address existing challenges
10. Especially for contract manufacturers, there is a rising opportunity from late-stage genetically modified therapies
11. Anticancer therapies presently contribute the most to the demand for vectors

The below-added infographic summarizes all the key challenges that the industry is currently facing:

To know more about the growing vector manufacturing market, check out the report here.