Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and Lonza have entered a collaboration to develop point-of-care cell-therapy manufacturing using the Cocoon manufacturing platform. The partnership will enable Sheba to streamline its in-house cell manufacturing process and produce genetically engineered human CAR-T cells for applications in treating critically ill oncology patients.
 
This collaborative agreement brings together a leading academic clinical center and an established development and manufacturing partner with the goal of delivering potentially curative therapies to a greater number of patients with advanced hematological malignancies. Sheba Medical Center treats oncology patients using novel immunotherapy treatments such as CAR-T, and Lonza will leverage its expertise in autologous cell-therapy process development to transfer Sheba’s current open, manual protocols into Lonza’s closed, automated Cocoon platform.
  
Eytan Abraham, head of Personalized Medicine, Lonza Pharma Biotech & Nutrition said, “This collaboration with Sheba Medical Center, a proven leader in point-of-care manufacturing and treatment of patients with novel immunotherapies, is a key part of the development program for the CocoonTM platform. We aim to confirm the benefits of using our closed, automated GMP-in-a-box concept to more efficiently manufacture personalized cell therapies right where the patients are, enabling treatment of a larger patient population.”