While Kite Pharma has partnered with Cytiva to develop a new cell therapy manufacturing platform, which was rolled out last month, the Gilead Sciences subsidiary isn’t stopping there in its pursuit of expertise in the production of CAR-T medicines.
Kite also is investigating the innovative platform of Cellares. The companies have agreed to a proof-of-concept evaluation of Cellares’ Cell Shuttle platform, which is an automated, end-to-end manufacturing unit the size of a truck. The test will determine the viability of the platform as a future manufacturing option for Kite, Cellares said.
“Given that manufacturing is central to how we deliver CAR T-cell therapies to physicians and patients, we are always assessing what technologies could further enhance our best-in-class manufacturing capabilities,” Chris McDonald, Kite’s global head of technical operations, said in a release.
Conducting a proof-of-concept evaluation with Bristol Myers Squibb paid dividends for Cellares. Seven months after the companies revealed their test, BMS signed a $380 million deal to reserve CAR-T manufacturing space for its FDA approved blood cancer treatments Breyanzi and Abecma.
Cellares, which has dubbed itself the world’s first integrated development and manufacturing organization (IDMO), has a setup that allows it to produce cell therapy batches with 90% less labor and facility space than conventional CDMOs, with a 50% lower batch price.
“We aim to fully automate all cell therapy manufacturing processes, moving us closer to delivering CAR T-cell therapies for a wide range of autoimmune diseases and cancers,” Fabian Gerlinghaus, CEO of South San Francisco, California-based Cellares, said in the release.
As for Cytiva, the Massachusetts-based company has developed Sefia, a platform designed to tackle challenges with producing cell therapies such as their heavy dependence on manual labor, limited manufacturing capacity and the risk of batch failures. Sefia can connect to Cytiva’s automation software that monitors manufacturing operations and manages supply chain logistics.
Another cell therapy manufacturer making noise with a new approach is Ori Biotech. Its space- and cost-efficient IRO platform automates, digitizes and standardizes the labor-intensive parts of the cell and gene therapy manufacturing workflow.