With the exciting news of Astellas licensing 4DMT’s viral vector for gene therapy for up to $962m, viral vector-based therapies continued to grow. According to our Beacon tracker, there were 829 clinically active viral vector-based drugs, split across 184 in AAV and 418 using lentivirus.

As biopharma looked to leverage viral vector for common diseases and commercialisation, there was an urgent need for viral vector process development experts to unite, seeking solutions to:

• Optimise formulation to enhance stability
• Improve process intensification across up- and downstream for maximum yield
• Integrate advance process analytical development techniques for functional particles and product quality
• Reduce COGS, in particular raw materials, to make these novel therapies accessible and affordable for patients
• Adhere to GMP compliance for patient safety and smooth approval process

The Viral Vector Formulation & Process Development Summit Europe recognised the above challenges, and it was the summit's aspiration to help attendees find answers to these burning questions. Emulating on our US community’s success, this summit was the only definitive, end-to-end platform to unite 60+ viral vector leaders in the MSAT, Tech Ops, Process Development and Formulation teams and to share their lessons learned and journeys to-date:

• rAAVen Therapeutics will discuss how to advance capsid engineering to enhance stability of your vector
• Janssen & Vironova BioAnalytics to reveal characterisation of AAVs and other gene therapy vectors using TEM to assess CQAs
• Hookipa Pharma will share how to ensure compliance through particle analysis and formulation of viral vectors relating to ATMPs regulatory requirements
• UCB will help you overcome downstream process development and manufacturing of rAAV
• Lokon Pharma will set out the right criteria for CDMO partners, and how to overcome capacity and availability for viral vector production for speed-to-patient

In collaboration with the likes of VectorY, Roche, Janssen, UCB, this 2-day summit equipped attendees with the practical takeaways across LV, AAV, RSV pioneers.