Cleveland Clinic Experts Assess Strategies to Accelerate CAR T-Cell Production

Craig Sauter, MD, is director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at Cleveland Clinic. Brian T. Hill, MD, PhD, is director of the Lymphoid Malignancies Program and a staff physician at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. In this interview, they discuss new technologies that can reduce the time to manufacturing CAR T-cell agents.

The University of Pennsylvania published data in March 2022 demonstrating the efficacy of a manufacturing process that produces CAR T cells within 24 hours. Investigators at Novartis are also evaluating the T-Charge platform, which can produce a CAR T-cell product in about 2 days. At present, CAR T-cell manufacturing takes about 14 days.

Hill said the results so far are encouraging, but wants to see more data and more research conducted on a larger scale before concluding that these are viable approaches. Sauther noted that these processes still require apheresis that could delay the process, but added that these are exciting approaches. However, they agreed that faster production likely will not result in making CAR T-cell therapy available in more places.