Cellipont Bioservices, a cell therapy Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO), announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Ernexa Therapeutics (Nasdaq:ERNA), a developer of novel cell therapies for the treatment of advanced cancer and autoimmune disease.

The partnership will focus on Engineering, Differentiation, and Production (EDP) activities to advance ERNA-101, Ernexa's lead cell therapy for the treatment of ovarian cancer, into clinical manufacturing and clinical trials. Ernexa's core technology focuses on engineering induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and transforming them into induced mesenchymal stem cells (iMSCs). iMSC is a more specialised type of stem cell that has a unique ability to migrate toward tumours.

In preclinical studies, ERNA-101 has shown the potential to reprogram immunologically "cold" tumours into "hot" ones, increasing immune cell infiltration and suppressing tumour growth. The Cellipont partnership will support the current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) development and scale-up of the ERNA-101 manufacturing process ahead of clinical trials.