ORGS - Orgenesis Consortium Awarded €2.0M EUR Grant from Walloon Government in Belgium for MAIDAM AI Project for Monitoring Decentralized ATMP Manufacturing | Benzinga
GERMANTOWN, Md., Feb. 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orgenesis Inc. (NASDAQ:ORGS) ("Orgenesis" or the "Company"), a global leader in decentralized cell and gene therapies (CGTs), today announced that the Company's consortium was awarded a €2.0 million grant from the Walloon Government in Belgium, titled: "Monitoring with AI of Decentralized ATMP Manufacturing" (MAIDAM). The consortium members include: Orgenesis Services Belgium, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) / TRusted AI Labs (TRAIL) and DNAlytics. Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) are among the most innovative and promising biomedicines designed to address unmet medical needs, including cell, gene, exosome and phage therapies.
On January 17, 2024, the Walloon government launched a partnership, ATMP-Partenariat d'Innovation Technologique (ATMP-PIT), with an €81 million budget over three years, dedicated to ATMPs, in collaboration with BioWin, the health cluster for Wallonia, and the Public Service of Wallonia. This innovative partnership brings together 26 partners for 12 projects driving technological innovation. ATMP-PIT is intended to provide stimulus to Wallonia's advanced therapy medicines sector, by establishing new partnerships between teaching hospitals, research centers and life science companies, as well as create more than 470 direct and 1,200 indirect jobs over the next five years.
The MAIDAM project is focused on developing AI-based approaches for the monitoring and improvement of decentralized manufacturing processes for ATMPs via federated machine and reinforcement learning utilizing cell therapy processing on small and standardized manufacturing units. The project is intended to address the challenges of decentralization by developing innovative digital tools allowing providers to be more competitive by leveraging data from local production units.
Orgenesis plans to generate processing data on different equipment and integrate the data into its Octomera Mobile Processing Units and Lab (OMPUL) recently installed at Marche-en-Famenne in Belgium for use in autologous cell therapies.
Orgenesis Services Belgium General Manager Pierre Lammeretz said, "We are thrilled the grant accelerates the placement of a CAR-T dedicated OMPUL in Belgium, an important step in making more affordable CAR-T therapies available in the region."
Vered Caplan, CEO of Orgenesis commented "We are honored to receive this prestigious grant to advance AI technologies for the production of ATMPs that may ...