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Cellular Origins, Cytiva Partner on Robotic Mfg. Capabilities for CGTs

Will integrate Cytiva's manufacturing technologies with Cellular Origins’ robotic manufacturing platform.

By: Kristin Brooks

Managing Editor, Contract Pharma

Cytiva, a global life sciences company, and Cellular Origins, a company working to advance scalable and cost-effective cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing, have entered into a collaboration combining Cytiva’s automated Sefia platform with Cellular Origin’s automated robotic platform, Constellation. The companies aim to enable CGT manufacturers to scale up production to industrial levels without changing the process used during discovery phases or clinical trials.

The two systems aim to interface seamlessly, providing complete digital interconnection, including quality control systems, fully remote digital controls, and analytics. Removing the need for manual intervention between and within CGT manufacturing steps will help drive new standards of automation and manufacturing productivities.

Current manufacturing practices heavily depend on manual labor, adding to the complexity and variability of the processes. Additionally, limited manufacturing capacity, significant risk of batch failures, and the expected increase of regulatory approvals for wider indications will make it more challenging for drug developers to satisfy growing demand.

Edwin Stone, CEO, Cellular Origins, said, “The manufacturing of cell and gene therapies must evolve from personalized and small batch medicine to industrialization if these therapies are to reach their potential for patients. At Cellular Origins, we are working to make this a reality. By collaborating with Cytiva, a leading life sciences provider, we are building a unified automation platform that can meet the sector’s large-scale industrial needs.”

Emmanuel Abate, President Genomic Medicine, Cytiva, said, “Countless patients have benefited from Cytiva’s cell processing systems, and we remain enthusiastic about the therapeutic potential of CAR-T. We firmly believe that automating these processes will unlock wider access to these life-changing therapies. The open nature of Cellular Origins’ design fits seamlessly with Cytiva’s Sefia platform and potentially benefits a wide array of therapeutic developers. We are excited to see what the combined potential of our collaboration brings to the future of medicine.”

These efforts are underway, and the first systems are set for process and biologic testing in early 2025. GMP systems are expected to be available by the end of 2025 for clinical use. 

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