Invetech’s cell therapy team in front of the Formulation and Fill Platform.

Fortive is a Fortune 500 diversified industrial growth company with a portfolio of global businesses in fast-moving fields like healthcare, software development, robotics, transportation, and energy. The annual Fortive Growth & Innovation Conference celebrates and cultivates Fortive’s shared purpose of and dedication to advancing technology.

Innovators from across Fortive’s operational companies met for the fourth annual Conference at Tektronix’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Jim Lico, Fortive President and Chief Executive Officer, presented three teams with the 2019 Fortive Innovation Awards, with Invetech’s Formulate and Fill Platform receiving the bronze medal.

The award-winning Formulation and Fill Platform is a closed manufacturing system for the commercial production of cell-based therapeutic products, master and working cell banks, growth media and viral vector, supporting the global cell and gene therapy market.

“Cell therapy is a nascent field of medicine, promising curative therapies to previously unmanageable disease conditions, including aggressive cancers and autoimmune diseases,” remarked David Kneen, Invetech Vice President, Cell Therapy. “Our Formulation and Fill Platform enables robust, scalable and cost-effective manufacture of these therapies at commercial scale, ultimately helping our clients deliver life-saving treatment to patients in need.”

The new Platform automates the previously manual, labor-intensive and time-consuming formulate and fill processes common to many cell and gene therapies. It delivers a consistent output, enables rapid capacity expansion both within and across sites, and drives cost savings through operator efficiency and elimination of high-grade cleanroom space.

The Platform is highly configurable to meet client and process requirements and is built on an underlying architecture comprising industrial manufacturing equipment and single-use closed disposables, providing an assured pathway to GMP manufacture.

Invetech has recently completed the first installations of the Formulatiom and Fill Platform at multiple sites for a US-based client. The Platform is part of Invetech’s rapidly expanding offering of commercial manufacturing systems for cell and gene therapy.