The facility adds up to 20 cGMP manufacturing lines for autologous and allogeneic cell therapies, personalized vaccines and regenerative medicine.
Northway Biotech has officially opened its $70.8 million (€61 million) cell therapy and personalized medicine contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) facility in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Named the Innovative Cell Therapy and Personalized Medicine Center, the 3,500-square-meter facility opened on September 3 at the Vilnius City Innovation Industrial Park as part of Northway Group’s BIO CITY III development. The new center features up to 20 independent current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) manufacturing lines.
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, a Northern European country on the Baltic Sea and one of the three Baltic states alongside Latvia and Estonia.
Lithuania had about 275 deep-tech companies with a combined enterprise value of approximately $2.3 billion (€2 billion) in enterprise value, according to the Baltic Deep Tech Report 2025.
The center incorporates quality control laboratories, cleanroom systems and separate production areas for cell therapies. These areas allow different cell-based products to be manufactured at the same time while maintaining controls around product identity, traceability and cross-contamination.
According to Northway, the facility will provide services to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, university hospitals and research centers.
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What Will the New Facility Manufacture?
The center is equipped to develop and manufacture both autologous cell therapies, which use a patient’s own cells, and allogeneic cell therapies, which rely on donor cells.
Beyond these, the facility will support the production of personalized therapeutic vaccines, regenerative medicine products and 3D human tissue technologies. Its 3D human tissue work includes developing models to study drug effects and investigate regenerative medicine approaches.
In oncology, the center’s cell therapy capabilities include manufacturing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell treatments. These therapies involve modifying a patient’s immune cells to recognize and attack specific cancer cells.
For some personalized therapies, an entire manufacturing process may be dedicated to a single patient.
The center expects to employ approximately 100 specialists across biotechnology, bioengineering, molecular biology and other life sciences fields.
The $70.8 million (€61 million) project was financed through a mix of company funds and a $55.7 million (€48 million) loan from Lithuania’s national development bank ILTE.
The center was built by Kamieninių ląstelių tyrimų centras (the Stem Cell Research Center), a Northway Group company that now operates the facility under the Northway Biotech brand.
BIO CITY Adds Cell Therapy Manufacturing in Vilnius
The new center is part of the broader BIO CITY campus, where two biotechnology manufacturing facilities are already operational within BIO CITY I. Nearby, BIO CITY II houses Celltechna, a gene therapy center that launched operations in 2024.
BIO CITY III now combines the newly opened cell therapy center with a biotechnology logistics center established earlier in 2026.
Real FDI included BIO CITY among its top 10 investor-ready projects in Central and Eastern Europe for 2026. Its long-term development vision is valued at up to approximately $8.1 billion (€7 billion), with projected employment of around 2,000 to 2,400 people over time.
Life sciences, biotechnology and health technologies account for about 3.7% of Lithuania’s GDP, with the government targeting 5% by 2030. Vilnius also has an established academic research base, including genome-editing and CRISPR work at Vilnius University’s Life Sciences Center.
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