Charles River Laboratories exercised its option to buy the remaining stake in PathoQuest and agreed to acquire K.F. (Cambodia) to secure nonhuman primate supply, paying roughly $60 million for PathoQuest and ~$510 million for K.F. The transactions aim to bolster CRL’s biologics QC, NGS‑based testing and in vivo supply chain stability. In parallel, Asimov struck a licensing agreement with AGC Biologics to commercialize its LV Edge Packaging lentiviral system, enabling single‑plasmid transfection from an engineered HEK293 cell line and reducing GMP plasmid costs and process complexity. These moves reflect industry efforts to de‑risk cell and gene therapy manufacturing via control over testing, animal supply and simplified viral production platforms — areas that have limited scale and added cost for developers.