15th February 2016
TrakCel selected for EU CAR-T Cell Therapy Project
€6 million EU project CARAT to optimise CAR-T development
TrakCel Ltd., a leading provider of clinical supply chain orchestration technology for Cell, Gene and Immunotherapies, today announced its selection as a key partner in CARAT, an EU-funded project to support the development of CAR T cell therapies.
The CARAT (Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) for Advanced Therapies) project aims to integrate innovative cell manufacturing tools and enabling technologies into a single new platform that will facilitate the safe, automated and cost-efficient manufacture of highly effective CAR T-cells.
TrakCel Ltd. joins a consortium of leading biotechnology pioneers including:
- Miltenyi Biotec GmbH
- Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM)
- Institut (Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines)
- European Research and Project Office and Universitätsklinikum Freiburg
- Ospedale San Raffaele
- University College London
CARAT will contribute to enabling the development, delivery and commercialisation of CAR T-cell technologies serving patients with so far incurable hematologic malignancies and solid tumours like colon, pancreas or lung cancer.
CARAT will enable clinical investigators and companies to focus on treatments rather than hurdles and thus be instrumental for the implementation of improved and more accessible treatment options that harnesses the strengths of the immune system.
TrakCel will work towards simplifying the management and manufacture CAR-T therapies by examining supply chain challenges in detail to produce exemplar methods of managing CAR-T supply chains. Detailed scrutiny will be applied to different delivery and management models including local and centralised manufacturing strategies. Furthermore, an application programming interface will be developed to provide a seamless exchange of data between TrakCel’s technology platform and Miltenyi’s cell therapy manufacturing equipment which will simplify needle to needle management, tracking and documenting of cell therapy products.
Dr Matthew Lakelin, Vice President of Scientific Affairs said: “Participating in this European project will give TrakCel access to some of Europe’s leading cell therapy developers and allow the company to integrate with cell therapy processing equipment. This is a fantastic opportunity for the company to be at the forefront of innovation in technology for cellular therapies.”
All available clinical data on CAR T-cell therapy, in particular the efficacy and long-lasting effect suggest this approach will have a clear and profound effect upon quality of life of cancer patients and a high acceptance of the therapy among patients can be expected.
The first milestone will have TrakCel execute a supply chain risk assessment that details the risks and mitigation strategies for an exemplar CAR-T therapy.