Point-of-care cell therapy manufacturing; it’s not for everyone

The use of cellular therapies to treat cancer, inherited immune deficiencies, hemoglobinopathies and viral infections is growing rapidly. The increased interest in cellular therapies has led to the development of reagents and closed-system automated instruments for the production of these therapies. For cellular therapy clinical trials involving multiple sites some people are advocating a decentralized model of manufacturing where patients are treated with cells produced using automated instruments at each participating center using a single, centrally held Investigational New Drug Application (IND). Many academic centers are purchasing these automated instruments for point-of-care manufacturing and participation in decentralized multiple center clinical trials. However, multiple site manufacturing requires harmonization of product testing and manufacturing in order to interpret the clinical trial results. Decentralized manufacturing is quite challenging since all centers should use the same manufacturing protocol, the same or comparable in-process and lot release assays and the quality programs from each center must work closely together. Consequently, manufacturing cellular therapies using a decentralized model is in many ways more difficult than manufacturing cells in a single centralized facility. Before an academic center decides to establish a point-of-care cell processing laboratory, they should consider all costs associated with such a program. For many academic cell processing centers, point-of-care manufacturing may not be a good investment.