NW Bio Accelerating Sawston Plant Phase I Buildout

Northwest Biotherapeutics (NW Bio), a biotechnology company developing DCVax personalized immune therapies for solid tumor cancers, said it is pursuing an intensive program of manufacturing preparations and planning as the company approaches top line data from its Phase III trial of DCVax-L. A cornerstone of this expanding program is completion of the Phase I buildout of the Sawston, UK manufacturing facility.

With construction crews working double shifts to accelerate this completion, the company currently anticipates the Phase I buildout will finish by mid-October of 2020.

This buildout is the culmination of several years of design, development and preparatory activities, including clean room suites, quarantined storage, quality control testing suites, controlled cryostorage (freezing) facilities for the finished products, as well as specialized systems. For example, for full air changes every 60 seconds in the clean room suites, and precise monitoring of particle counts in the clean room air. 

This accelerated effort is being supported by the company's recent financings and by a special purpose competitive loan of ~$1.77 million from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy which is administered locally in the Cambridge/Sawston region by the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority. The project cost of this accelerated construction project, initiated in June of this year, is approximately ~$4.6 million.