CO.DON AG - Delivery of machinery to Leipzig site complete

Berlin / Teltow, 12.12.2018 - Only 11 months after the contract was signed, the clean room technology for the new production site has all been delivered. The components were transported from Bologna to Leipzig over recent weeks and taken to the future production areas, where they were assembled on site.

Once it is completed and following an intensive validation and qualification process, the approximately 300 square metre premises will house one of the world's largest cutting-edge facilities for the production of human cells on an industrial scale. In its initial form, which can be expanded at any time, the facility has an annual capacity of around 4,500 cell transplants.

Ralf Jakobs, CEO of CO.DON AG: "To implement a project of this scale precisely on schedule and on budget requires an experienced team and excellent external partners, to whom we owe great thanks. They made a major contribution to this success and to achieving the targets we set and so have played a key role in CO.DON's future.

In addition to producing our own medicinal product, which is authorised for marketing across the EU, the new facility in Leipzig will also function as a contract manufacturing organisation (CMO), cultivating cells for other companies. This strategy is intend to contribute to covering the ongoing fixed costs and staff expenses of the plant and so achieve economies of scale that will impact the company's own margins, and at the same time give us the opportunity of scaling up the production of our own product.

The aim here is to manufacture cell-based, unfinished products, both for high-volume commercial production and for smaller volumes, e.g. in the field of clinical research. These external orders will be carried out using the material and staff resources of CO.DON AG. Talks with potential customers about such production contracts are already taking place."

CO.DON AG develops, produces and markets autologous cell therapies for the minimally invasive repair of cartilage defects. The product being marketed is a cell therapy product for the minimal invasive treatment of knee cartilage defects that uses only the patient's own cartilage cells ("autologous chondrocytes"). CO.DON's method is currently used in appr. 200 clinics in Germany and more than 14,000 patients have already been treated.

In July 2017 CO.DON received EU-wide marketing authorization for the advanced therapy medicinal product from the European Medicines Agency.

The shares in CO.DON AG are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ISIN: DE000A1K0227). Executive Board: Ralf M. Jakobs.

Further information is available from

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Matthias Meißner, M.A.

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