Catal­ent chief John Chimin­s­ki trig­gers a $315M-plus wa­ger on the boom­ing cell ther­a­py mar­ket now in the mak­ing

Last year Catal­ent CEO John Chimin­s­ki in­vest­ed more than a bil­lion dol­lars to ex­pand the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er ahead of an ex­plo­sion of gene ther­a­py tri­als and ex­pect­ed ap­provals. He’s start­ing this year with a $315 mil­lion wa­ger on the boom­ing cell ther­a­py field.

Just ahead of the mar­ket open Mon­day, Chimin­s­ki $CTLT laid out to me the de­tails of his de­ci­sion to buy a transat­lantic play­er that has been build­ing up man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty in CAR-Ts, TCRs, TILs (tu­mor-in­fil­trat­ing lym­pho­cytes) and mes­enchy­mal stem cell ther­a­pies.

In ex­change for the $315 mil­lion in cash, he’s get­ting MaS­Ther­Cell Glob­al and its 32,000 square-foot fa­cil­i­ty in Hous­ton and a 25,000 square-foot fa­cil­i­ty in Gos­selies, Bel­gium. The man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion is in the process of build­ing out a 60,000-square-foot ad­di­tion in Bel­gium set to go live next year, ex­pand­ing be­yond clin­i­cal sup­plies to the com­mer­cial realm.

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