Evan Zynda, PhD, on Optimizing Manufacturing to Increase Access to Cell Therapy

“Autologous and allogeneic manufacturing strategies are way different animals in terms of speed to treatment and patient access. An obvious benefit of autologous at the moment is that it is already commercially available, whereas allogeneic is not... and probably won't be for a few years. But the strategy of producing large batches in allogeneic therapies, that can be frozen down for multiple doses, will inherently improve patient access and speed to treatment.”

While cell therapies have shown some great initial success in the treatment of patients who have few other options, manufacturing cell therapy products in a timely manner has remained a challenge for the rapidly growing landscape of available therapies.

CGTLive spoke with Evan Zynda, PhD, senior scientist, Thermo Fisher Scientific, about the company’s approach to increasing patient access and reducing time to treatment for cell therapies. Zynda discussed the differences in manufacturing strategies for autologous cell therapy products, several of which are already commercially available, and allogeneic products, some of which will likely become commercially available within the next few years. In addition to noting the benefits and drawbacks to both types of therapies, he went over how the 2 differ in terms of ideal approaches to scaling for manufacturing.

Zynda also discussed the importance of fostering strategic partnerships between companies working on cell therapy solutions. He highlighted the fact that collaboration removes a lot of the guesswork in manufacturing and ensures that processes and products work as intended, thus potentially accelerating commercial availability of new treatments.