The first dedicated cell therapy and personalised medicine centre of its kind in the Baltic states has opened in Vilnius, Lithuania, marking a major expansion of Northway Biotech’s CDMO capabilities in advanced therapies.
The Northway Group has invested €61m in the new 3,500 sq. m facility within the broader BIO CITY III development.
The centre expands Northway Biotech’s established CDMO platform across mammalian and microbial biologics, gene therapy, and cell-based technologies, adding new development and cGMP manufacturing capacity for advanced and personalised therapies. It will support biotech and pharmaceutical companies, university hospitals, and research institutions and begins operations with its first customers already on board and contracts in place.
The facility brings together specialised infrastructure and technologies for the development and cGMP manufacturing of autologous and allogeneic cell-based therapies, personalised therapeutic vaccines, regenerative medicine applications, and 3D human tissue technologies. Its segregated manufacturing infrastructure enables multiple cell-based products and processes to be handled in parallel while maintaining stringent requirements for product identity, quality, traceability, and contamination control.
The opening also marks a significant milestone for Kamieninių ląstelių tyrimų centras (Stem Cell Research Center), the company operating the new facility under the Northway Biotech brand, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. Founded in 2011 by Vladas Algirdas Bumelis, the company has spent 15 years building practical experience in cGMP environments and systematically developing its expertise in stem cell research, cell-based technologies, and advanced therapeutic applications.
“Fifteen years ago, we did not have a €61m centre – we had people and ambition. Over the years, we have built practical experience, grown our team, and advanced our cell technology capabilities. Today, we are systematically taking all of this to an entirely new scale. What seemed like the future of medicine 15 years ago is now being created here in Lithuania,” said Bumelis, founder of the Northway Group.
The significance of the center for Lithuania was also highlighted by the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda.
“This centre is about people. About scientists who will be able to stay in Lithuania and work with technologies that are shaping the future of medicine. About patients for whom personalised medicine is not an abstract concept, but a real treatment option. And about all of us as a country, proving that we can be not only observers, but creators at the global frontier of science,” Nausėda said.
The new centre will operate up to 20 independent cGMP-compliant manufacturing lines. It features quality control laboratories, advanced cleanroom systems, and segregated infrastructure designed for the manufacturing of highly sensitive cell therapies.
In personalised therapies, an individual manufacturing process may be dedicated to a single patient – their cells and their disease.
“We are accustomed to traditional pharmaceutical manufacturing, where a single process produces medicines for large numbers of patients. Here, in some cases, an entire manufacturing process may be dedicated to just one person. It is a completely different pharmaceutical model – and this is precisely the kind of medicine this centre was built for,” Bumelis said.
The centre’s services are targeted at international biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, university hospitals, and research centres. Northway Biotech will provide development and manufacturing services for advanced therapies from the new Vilnius facility.
The new facility will enable Northway Biotech to scale up its capabilities in cell and tissue technologies.
One area involves technologies in which a patient’s immune cells are modified to enable them to recognise and destroy specific cancer cells. In parallel, 3D human tissue technologies are being developed to create more physiologically relevant tissue models, study drug effects, and advance regenerative medicine solutions.
Northway’s expertise in cell biology and tissue engineering will also be further applied to regenerative medicine, including research into the mechanisms of tissue regeneration and ways to preserve or restore tissue function. The development of personalised therapeutic vaccine technologies will also continue on a larger scale.
Northway’s investment contributes to Lithuania’s ambition for the life sciences sector to account for 5% of the country’s GDP by 2030.
The new centre is expected to bring together approximately 100 life sciences professionals. The €61m investment project is financed through private funds and a loan from Lithuania’s national development bank ILTE under the Milijardas verslui (Billion for Business) initiative.
“Today, Lithuania is not only a user of advanced technologies, but also a country where they are created and developed. The opening of the BIO CITY centre is an important step in strengthening Lithuania’s biomedical ecosystem and our position in the international market. We have a strong foundation for the sector’s continued growth – Lithuania is home to highly qualified professionals in biomedicine, medicine, and science, while growing investment demonstrates international confidence in our potential,” said Edvinas Grikšas, Minister of the Economy and Innovation.