Ascend Unveils Proprietary Enhancers That Significantly Improve AAV Yields Without Compromising Quality

EQS-News: Ascend Advanced Therapies (Ascend) / Key word(s): Miscellaneous Ascend Unveils Proprietary Enhancers That Significantly Improve AAV Yields Without Compromising Quality 10.11.2025 / 18:05 CET/CEST The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. New data from Ascend's R&D team demonstrate up to 3-fold increase in AAV yields, supporting greater efficiency and scalability across gene therapy programs.

MUNICH, Nov. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend Advanced Therapies today makes public data demonstrating the performance of two proprietary manufacturing enhancers that deliver a substantial increase in adeno-associated virus (AAV) production yields while maintaining critical quality attributes across batches.

Developed through a collaborative research effort, two enhancers have now been tested at multiple scales in HEK293 cells using Ascend's EpyQ two-plasmid AAV Production System and a commercially available 3-plasmid system, with no negative effects on quality parameters such as vg/cap ratio or mispackaged DNA being observed. Enhancer activity was further confirmed using customer plasmids.

• Enhancer 1 has been found to produce up to 3-fold more AAV vector using EpyQ in Ambr15 and up to 1.7-fold more for the 3-plasmid system at Ambr15 scale and in 2L bioreactors.
• Enhancer 2 has been found to produce up to 2.4-fold more AAV using the EpyQ plasmid system at Ambr15 scale, and up to 2.1-fold for Ambr250 scale and 5L bioreactors. This work has now also been replicated in experiments conducted by an external party, interested in licensing.

"Improving AAV productivity without compromising product quality is one of the most persistent challenges in gene therapy manufacturing," said Dr. Markus Hörer, Chief Scientific Officer at Ascend Advanced Therapies. "This enhancer represents a meaningful step forward — not just for our internal platform, but for our partners who depend on scalable and reliable AAV manufacturing. This advancement could allow twice as many patients to be treated per vector batch, reducing cost of goods."