Pursuing Strategic Partnerships in Cell Therapy

“The winning opportunity for cell therapy is to go allogeneic and off-the-shelf and to be able to kind of streamline and significantly improve those manufacturing processes to make it more readily-able to be presented to patients... By improving the manufacturing process and making it available to more patients we’re going to increase the overall access to patients—access not only from a pricing perspective but from a pure-access perspective, having cell therapy able to be delivered to every hospital, and not just to a handful of excellence centers...”

As the field of cell therapy continues to expand, companies are looking for ways to streamline manufacturing processes and speed up development of new therapies. Raphaël G. Ognar, chief executive officer and co-founder, NKILT Therapeutics, spoke with CGTLive about the company's approach to process development and strategic partnerships.

Ognar discussed the difficulties caused by manufacturing bottlenecks in the field of cell therapy, and the advantages of allogeneic and off-the-shelf approaches to process development for increasing patient access. He also emphasized the importance of not reinventing the wheel when it comes to both manufacturing processes and scientific research in general, pointing out the benefits of strategic partnerships between cell therapy focused companies, especially those in the early stages of development. Ognar additionally highlighted the importance of this collaborative approach in pursuing the goal of helping new cancer treatments reach patients more quickly.