Cesca Therapeutics, a provider of autologous cell therapies for regenerative medicine, has acquired the remaining 20% equity share of its device subsidiary, ThermoGenesis, from Bay City Capital (BCC).

Cesca Therapeutics

Image: Cesca Therapeutics acquires 20% stake in ThermoGenesis. Photo: Courtesy of etaphop photo at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Cesca Therapeutics has also formed new ThermoGenesis subsidiary, CARTXpress Bio, to focus on its CAR-TXpress cellular processing platform.

BCC has taken 20% ownership in CARTXpress Bio, while the remaining 80% will be owned by ThermoGenesis.

With this transaction, ThermoGenesis is now fully-owned by Cesca Therapeutics and will be focused on developing automated medical devices and technologies for cell-based therapies including stem cell banking, point-of-care applications, and large-scale cell manufacturing of immunotherapy drugs, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells.

ThermoGenesis president Haihong Zhu has been appointed as the president of the newly formed subsidiary. The company intends to report ThermoGenesis as a 100% owned device division from this year’s first quarter results.

ThermoGenesis’ technology platform includes the AutoXpress platform, which was developed by the company. This platform has been designed to address the needs of stem cell banking industry and has AXP and AXP (II).

It has also developed BioArchive, a product for automated controlled-rate-freezing and cryogenic storage of cellular product for clinical applications.

The company’s POCXpress platform is an automation platform with dedicated devices to rapidly process, autologous peripheral blood or bone marrow-derived stem cells and other hematopiotic components at point of care, such as surgical clients or clinics.

The CAR-TXpress platform is a semi-automated system that selects target cells using Cesca’s buoyancy-activated cell separation (BACS) technology for more efficient cellular manufacturing.  It includes X-LAB for Cell Isolation, X-BACS for Cell Selection, X-WASH for Cell Washing and Reformulation.

Last November, the company secured FDA 510(k) clearance to sell its AXP II AutoXpress Platform for Clinical Cord Blood Banking. The AXP II, in combination with its companion, single-use, cell separation set offers automated and reliable harvest of stem and progenitor cells from collected units of umbilical cord blood in a ‘functionally-closed’ sterile system.

The AXP II has an upgraded functionality, user interface and compatibility with newer operating systems. It also has improved docking station and XpressTRAK software to maintain compliance with Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) and Current Good Tissue Practice (cGTP) regulations.