ScaleReady Announces a G-Rex® Grant has been awarded to BrainChild Bio

ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ScaleReady, in collaboration with Wilson Wolf Manufacturing, Bio-Techne Corporation and CellReady, today announced that BrainChild Bio has been awarded a $300,000 G-Rex® Grant. The G-Rex® Grant will support expeditious process development and commercial readiness of BCB-276, BrainChild Bio's lead autologous CAR-T therapy for the treatment of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an incurable type of pediatric brain tumor. BrainChild Bio plans to advance BCB-276 into a multi-center Phase 2 pivotal clinical trial in 2025 for the treatment of children and young adults with DIPG.

"G-Rex has been an essential element of our clinical CAR-T manufacturing program at Seattle Children's dating back to 2012. We greatly appreciate the support of ScaleReady's G-Rex Grant Program as well as the technical expertise offered to us by ScaleReady related to new advancements," said Dr. Michael Jensen, Chief Scientific Officer at BrainChild Bio.

"We have a tremendous amount of respect for pioneering CAR-T therapies that Dr. Jensen and his team have advanced over the last 15 years. Their relentless pursuit of cancer cures is inspiring. It's an honor for our team to be able to help accelerate BrainChild's novel BCB-276 treatment for brain tumors to those in need and this program is perfectly aligned with our goal of bringing hope to cancer patients," said John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Wolf Manufacturing Corporation and co-inventor of G-Rex.

As part of the G-Rex Grant, BrainChild Bio will perform process development and optimization of their G-Rex based CAR-T cell manufacturing process in anticipation of a pivotal clinical trial. Through this G-Rex Grant, ScaleReady will help BrainChild quickly establish optimal process simplicity, consistency, and flexibility in their manufacturing approach for BCB-276. Additionally, BrainChild Bio will have the option to evaluate CellReady's standardized CAR-T cell process, a highly efficient 7-day manufacturing process. The CellReady CAR-T process is a fully closed end-to-end process that incorporates the use of closed system G-Rex bioreactors and Bio-Techne's new closed system ProPak GMP cytokines in a manufacturing workflow capable of delivering high-throughput products to patients.

ScaleReady's G-Rex Grant Program is a $20M initiative to advance the state of cell and gene-modified cell therapy (CGT) development and manufacturing by awarding individual Grant Awards worth up to $300,000. G-Rex Grant Recipients also gain access to exclusive support from ScaleReady's growing consortium of G-Rex Grant Partners who bring best-in-class tools and technologies as well as unparalleled knowledge and expertise in the areas of cGMP manufacturing, quality and regulatory affairs, CGT business operations, and more.

For more information about the G-Rex® Grant Program, please contact [email protected].

About ScaleReady
ScaleReady provides the field of cell and gene-modified cell therapy (CGT) with a G-Rex centric manufacturing platform that enables the world's most practical, flexible, scalable, and affordable CGT drug product development and manufacturing.

The G-Rex manufacturing platform is currently used by a rapidly growing list of over 800 organizations and is producing drug products for approximately 50% of CGT clinical trials as well as 5 commercially approved CGT drugs.

CGT entities relying on the breadth and scope of ScaleReady's expertise can expect to save years of time and millions of dollars on the path to CGT commercialization.

For more information about the ScaleReady G-Rex® Grant Program, please contact [email protected].

About Wilson Wolf Manufacturing
Wilson Wolf (www.wilsonwolf.com) is dedicated to simplifying cell and gene-modified cell (CGT) therapy research, process development, and manufacturing. This is being accomplished through its scalable G-Rex technology, which is used throughout the world in CGT applications ranging from basic research to commercial drug production.

Wilson Wolf's mission is to create hope for cancer patients, one G-Rex® device at a time.

About Bio-Techne Corporation
Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) is a global life sciences company providing innovative tools and bioactive reagents for the research and clinical diagnostic communities. Bio-Techne, in partnership with Wilson Wolf, is creating products such as media and cytokines that are specifically tailored to G-Rex® Bioreactors, including right-sized reagent quantities in containers that are tailored to high throughput closed-system manufacturing. For more information on Bio-Techne and its brands, please visit https://www.bio-techne.com or follow the Company on social media at: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube.

Contact: David Clair, Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Development
[email protected]
612-656-4416

About CellReady LLC
CellReady is the world's first and only G-Rex centric contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) specializing in G-Rex based cell and gene-modified cell therapy development and manufacturing. The company offers a wide range of services to support the development and commercialization of these therapies.

CellReady's mission is to create hope for cancer patients, one G-Rex® process at a time.

About BrainChild Bio
BrainChild Bio, Inc., is a kids-first, clinical-stage biotechnology company harnessing the power of CAR T-cell technology to treat tumors in the central nervous system, prioritizing pediatric indications with plans to expand into adult CNS tumors, specifically Glioblastoma and Brain Metastasis. BrainChild Bio is advancing a next-generation CAR T-cell therapy platform for tumors of the CNS that weaves together synthetic technologies, including multiplex targeting and enhanced potency controls, to enable multiple targets in a single CAR T-cell therapy, novel transgenes to increase potency, delivery technology for durable efficacy, and streamlined CAR T-cell design and manufacturing. BrainChild Bio's lead drug candidate is BCB-276, an autologous CAR T-cell therapy that targets the immune checkpoint B7-H3, that is advancing in clinical trials for the treatment of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a pediatric cancer that forms in the brainstem which currently has no approved treatments. More information is available at www.brainchildbio.com

SOURCE Bio-Techne Corporation