Cellares to Establish Commercial Production Site for CAR-T Cell Therapies in Japan

Cellares, a pioneer in automated cell therapy manufacturing, is establishing Japan’s first next-gen commercial production site for CAR-T cell therapies.

The facility is under construction in Kashiwa City, a booming biotech hub located approximately 30 kilometers northeast of central Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture. This Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) Smart Factory is expected to provide employment to 350 people while enabling scalable and cost-effective cell therapy manufacturing, addressing an urgent need for patients in Japan and neighboring regions.

The facility, set to open in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan, will utilize Cellares’ technology platforms, the Cell Shuttle and Cell Q, to automate cell therapy manufacturing and quality control. The technology reduces batch prices by up to 50% and eliminates the manufacturing bottlenecks faced by conventional CDMOs that use manual processes. Additionally, the entire Smart Factory will be integrated and optimized to eliminate any downstream bottlenecks as well.

“Cellares’ new facility in Kashiwa City will enable our pharma clients to supply Japan from Japan. Manufacturing cell therapies locally simplifies cold chain logistics, accelerates vein-to-vein time and reduces cost,” said Fabian Gerlinghaus, CEO and Co-Founder of Cellares. “Our Japanese IDMO Smart Factory is part of a broader strategy to be a global manufacturing partner for our clients and meet the total patient demand for cell therapies around the world.”

The new site’s impact extends beyond patient care. By accelerating the availability of CAR-T treatments, this initiative has the potential to help advance the development and approval of CAR-T therapeutics in Japan. Once the IDMO Smart Factory is online, technical transfers between Cellares facilities in other regions are expected to be a seamless, rapid, software-enabled process. Thanks to fully automated processes on standardized technologies, tech transfer can now happen at digital speed.