Discussing the Need to Industrialize CGT Manufacturing (Part 1)

The cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry has seen significant progress in recent years, but challenges remain in scaling up manufacturing to meet patient demand, notes Edwin Stone, PhD, CEO of Cellular Origins, who offers his unique perspective to this challenge, drawing on his background in robotics and life science automation.

In an interview with BioPharm International®, Stone emphasizes the need to "industrialize" the CGT field, leveraging advanced technologies to enable reliable, high-volume production. Tough market conditions in 2024 have led companies to focus on cash flow and partnerships, he observes, as companies have come to recognize that no single entity can tackle the complex technical and operational hurdles alone.

Having come back from Advanced Therapies Week held in Dallas, Tex., in January 2025, Stone gave his impression of the big issues weighing on people’s minds from dealing with industry challenges in the past year. "I think one of the interesting things that came out of that [conference] was we've really seen people emerge strongly from that. I think people had to think really hard about what their business plans are. And so, whereas perhaps previously, in what is now often referred to as the year of free money, people could perhaps be a little bit more generous about worrying about problems of cash flows and revenues and customers. In the future, there's been this sort of doubling down on, what is it that is really going to make this business work?"

For Cellular Origins’ part, the company aims to integrate existing tools and technologies into a scalable robotic automation platform. Key features include sterile material handling, good manufacturing practice-compliant workflows, and a digital backbone to reduce manual labor and errors. Importantly, this system is designed to seamlessly integrate with the proven processes and consumables that CGT developers have optimized, Stone explains. To that end, the company formed a partnership with Cytiva in January to integrate their respective platforms to offer automated, robotic manufacturing of CGTs (1).

Click above for the full interview.

Reference

1. Cytiva. Cellular Origins and Cytiva are Collaborating to Deliver Automated Robotic Manufacturing Capabilities for Cell and Gene Therapies. Press Release. Jan. 16, 2025.

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About the speaker

Edwin Stone, PhD, CEO, Cellular Origins

Edwin Stone has spent more than 20 years bringing new life science technologies to market, the last 10 of these focused on solving the challenges of cell therapy manufacturing. He established TTP’s cell and gene team which developed more than 10 cell therapy automation systems, including systems that are now in routine use for commercial therapy manufacture. Seeing the challenge of scale remained unaddressed, Stone co-founded Cellular Origins to enable patient access to cell therapies through scalable, cost-effective, and space-efficient manufacturing enabled by the Constellation automated cell therapy manufacturing platform. Stone holds a Master’s degree in Engineering and a PhD in robotic vehicles from the University of Cambridge.