Wheeler Bio Announces Opening of Biomanufacturing Facility in Oklahoma City
Wheeler plans to use the facility to bolster its mission in helping fledgling biotech innovators and startups accelerate their development at an equitable price.
Communication between the manufacturing plant and retail stores. | Image Credit: © Cagkan - stock.adobe.com
On Oct. 5, 2023, Wheeler Bio, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for next-gen protein therapeutics, announced the grand opening of their new drug substance current good manufacturing practices (CGMP) facility. The facility is located inside the Ziggurat building in the heart of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Wheeler plans to use the facility to bolster its mission in helping fledgling biotech innovators and startups accelerate their development at an equitable price.
The facility includes:
- Two single-use drug substance lines (50L and 500L scale HyPerforma DynaDrive)
- Two single-use drug substance lines (50L and 500L scale HyPerforma DynaDrive)
- A buffer and media prep suite
- A RightSourceSM quality control testing lab (Charles River Labs)
- Two master cell banking suites
- Document control, utilities, and office space.
The 35,000-square-foot space was designed and built by Wheeler Bio, CRB, and Lingo Constructions Service in collaboration with their automation and validation partners, Lucid and CAI. Two commissioned runs were completed recently using Wheeler’s Portable CMC antibody process platform, and the first orders for CGMP drug substance batches have already been delivered to the client.
Founded by Dr. Jesse McCool, Christian Kanady of Echo, and Errik Anderson of Alloy Therapeutics and 82VS in 2021, Wheeler Bio partners with venture capital to aid with the process from discovery to clinic for those in biologics innovation. As a CDMO service provider, Wheeler aims to be more accessible, affordable, and agile than larger competitors through use of its hub-and-spoke operational model and Portable CMC platform.
“We are leveraging the cost advantages and the trained biomanufacturing workforce in Oklahoma City to create a highly differentiated CDMO,” stated Jesse McCool, co-founder and CEO at Wheeler, in a Wheeler press release “With our accessible, modular approach to CMC development, extensive technology stack, and pools-based workflow parallelization, Wheeler is raising the bar for early-clinical-phase biologics services.”
