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Cellares and Poseida partnership aims to accelerate cell therapy manufacturing 

The two companies are joining forces to as part of the Cellares Early Access Partnership Program.

By Brian Buntz | July 14, 2021

Cell Shuttle

Cellares calls the Cell Shuttle a factory-in-a-box for cell therapy manufacturing.

Cellares Corp. (South San Francisco, Calif.), which is focused on accelerating cell therapy manufacturing, is teaming up with Poseida Therapeutics, Inc. as part of its Early Access Partnership Program (EAPP). Poseida is the third company to join the program after PACT Pharma and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

“We’ve had relationships with several key stakeholders within Poseida for years,” said Fabian Gerlinghaus, co-founder and CEO of Cellares. “And Poseida shares our vision.”

As for Cellares’ vision, the company has developed a system it calls the Cell Shuttle, an automated, end-to-end platform it dubs a “cell therapy factory-in-a-box.”

While cell therapies have tremendous promise for treating aggressive blood cancers, solid tumors and rare genetic diseases, they can also be costly. While costs can vary widely, a 2019 study put the cost of CAR T-cell therapy at $1.5 million per treatment.

Traditionally, the process for “making these cell therapies is incredibly manual,” Gerlinghaus said. The method of making autologous cells for a single patient is no small task. “You have a team of scientists spending two to three weeks executing on the order of 50 manual processing steps, 80 hours of touch time, generating 500 pages of documentation for every single patient,” Gerlinghaus added. “The logistics of scaling this out to say 10,000 or 50,000 patients per year per drug are a nightmare.”

Cellares cell shuttle

From left to right: Alex Pesch, Cellares co-founder and CTO; Fabian Gerlinghaus, co-founder and CEO; and Omar Kurdi, co-founder and president.

Put differently, cellular manufacturing using manual methods “does not scale, and it’s cost-prohibitive,” Gerlinghaus explained.

The company’s Cell Shuttle fully automates the entire process end to end. And because it is an end-to-end closed system, it reduces the risk of contamination and the risk of operator error and process failure.

Cellares estimates the system reduces the amount of human labor required for cell therapy manufacturing by roughly 70%.

Gerlinghaus also said the system offers “an order of magnitude improvement in throughput so that you can manufacture 10 autologous cell therapy doses for 10 different patients or 10 allogeneic batches simultaneously,” he said. “We can actually scale out from 10,000 to 50,000 patients per year per drug, depending on the particular indication.”

Cellares is confident its partners can help scale its technology. “We’re starting with indications and partners who are working on medications that have high patient populations,” Gerlinghaus said. “Poseida is really a champion and a true believer in the future of cell therapy manufacturing. So it was obvious to us that we wanted to partner with Poseida.”

Robotic arm in the Cell Shuttle


Filed Under: Drug Discovery, Oncology
Tagged With: CAR T-cell therapy, cell therapy manufacturing, Cellares Corp., EAPP, Early Access Partnership Program, Poseida Therapeutics
 

About The Author

Brian Buntz

As the pharma and biotech editor at WTWH Media, Brian has almost two decades of experience in B2B media, with a focus on healthcare and technology. While he has long maintained a keen interest in AI, more recently Brian has made making data analysis a central focus, and is exploring tools ranging from NLP and clustering to predictive analytics.

Throughout his 18-year tenure, Brian has covered an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, medical devices, and drug discovery and development. Prior to WTWH, he held the title of content director at Informa, where he focused on topics such as connected devices, cybersecurity, AI and Industry 4.0. A dedicated decade at UBM saw Brian providing in-depth coverage of the medical device sector. Engage with Brian on LinkedIn or drop him an email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.

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