InVitria
Revolutionizing T-Cell Immunotherapies

InVitria’s journey to take a leadership role in immunotherapy began with its inception as a novel producer of components necessary for cell culture and health. The company was established to respond to the unmet needs within biotechnology to supply critical proteins, components, and cytokines without requiring mammalian sources (e.g., human and bovine serum). Whole serum and serum-derived components have been ubiquitously used in a wide range, but there have been increasing market and regulatory demands to find suitable replacements. While other serum alternatives previously existed, they often lacked the consistency, definition, and scalability that modern biopharmaceutical production facilities demand. InVitria offers something different: Blood-Free. This is the promise that components and products are completely serum- and animal-free; products are manufactured from a non-mammalian expression system that can scale to production volumes.

Early on, InVitria was developing an alternative to the serum used in cell culture. Human or bovine serum commonly used by the vaccine and cell-based biologics industries introduce the risk of contamination with adventitious pathogens. In addition, serum and serum-derived components lack the consistency required by precise cellular function and may be tied to supply chain constraints associated with blood and blood-products. Thus, InVitria began producing recombinant proteins and serum-free media that solved these inherent limitations of traditional blood-derived products.

Immunotherapy then became a natural application for these Blood-Free sources of critical raw materials. In Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, propagating of the proper number of cells and their high potency is among the most critical outcomes. To accomplish this, InVitria leveraged its experience as an innovator in serum-free and custom media formulations, which it had previously developed for gene therapy, cell therapy, and vaccine and antibody production. The development team believed that creating a chemically defined media for CAR-T cell culture would be an effective application to leverage its components and expertise. This led InVitria to develop OptiPEAK T-Lymphocyte serum-free, chemically defined cell culture media to optimize T-cell expansion in immunotherapies.

We provide a level of quality with our products, which on account of being recombinant, tend to perform better than the alternatives that are on the market

InVitria has progressed by offering its products for several cancer therapies, some of which have recently been FDA-approved. Customer solutions that are now on the market benefit from years of interactive partnership and incorporate InVitria's products in both upstream and downstream production processes. One example involves a biotechnology company who commercialized novel breast cancer therapeutics. InVitria replaced a serum-derived protein in the production system with its recombinant transferrin; Blood-Free Optiferrin® mitigated this customer’s concerns about using serum and serum-derived components in its manufacturing process.

The company's success in the oncology therapy area has led to additional applications of its offerings in other sectors like T-cell immunotherapy and antibody-drug conjugate areas, including viral vaccines and gene therapies. The combination of quality and performance of InVitria's products is one of the primary reasons its products are used across these applications. "We provide a level of quality with our products, which on account of being recombinant, tend to perform better than the alternatives that are on the market," says Scott Deeter, CEO of InVitria.

As this past year progressed following the onset of the pandemic, the global life sciences community witnessed a growing demand for a wide range of raw materials required to develop and manufacture vaccines and diagnostics for COVID-19. The heightened demand for cell-based manufacturing for vaccines and therapies accelerated the demand for proteins and components. Demand began to outstrip supply as natural sources of serum and serum-derived components has become stressed, further highlighting the need for an uninterruptable supply chain for critical proteins, such as albumin. InVitria, across all markets and applications, seeks to remedy this concern with more scalable products that are not dependent on mammalian blood supply while providing superior or equivalent to blood-derived materials performance.

InVitria also produces excipient-grade recombinant human serum albumin that can be used in the final formulation for vaccines and specially tailored high-purity rHSA that can be used in medical devices, small molecule solubilization, and drug delivery. The company prioritizes scaling up its capacity to meet the needs of its customers who can, in turn, scale up from clinical trials through global production. "We respond to customer needs and deliver based on what our customers expect and try to exceed their expectations," concludes Deeter.