We asked attendees this year for their key takeaways, highlights, and meeting themes from this year’s ISCT. See what was top of mind for these executives and investors across the cell therapy space.

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There is broad dissatisfaction with existing suboptimal manufacturing workflows, driven by the need for scalable throughput due to earlier line of therapy approvals and advancements in solid tumor treatments. The recent approval of a commercial TIL therapy has renewed focus on strategies to improve potency in the challenging solid tumor microenvironment. At the same time, the CDMO market, which has overbuilt capacity, is evolving, emphasizing differentiation and truly scalable workflows, which now require significant technical competencies. There also was quite a bit of talk around potency assessment during manufacturing and at release to develop better assays that might be at- or in-line with manufacturing.

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The major focus at this year’s meeting seemed to be innovation and it was great to see a large crowd of over 2000 industry stakeholders together.  Seeing new technologies being launched like Ori's new IRO® (ee-RO) platform and the Cytiva Sefia is a great indicator of the level of technology innovation being developed to support the next generation of cell therapies.  Technologies like these can help ensure that developers are bringing commercially viable products to market which can reach patients at scale, something that has proven difficult for the industry thus far.  The great news is that developers no longer have to sacrifice biological performance to get the benefits of automation, as we are now able to automate better biology.  Overall, it was great to see a palpable level of excitement, even amongst academic researchers, for these new technologies amongst the cell therapy community.  

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The cell therapy industry is seeing significant advancements in automation and commercialization of manufacturing platforms, aiming for highly reproducible and agile processes. New platforms such as Ori's IRO, unveiled at this-year’s conference, and Cytiva's enhanced Sefia system, are part of this trend, with the goal of improving upon existing solutions like the Miltenyi Prodigy and Lonza Cocoon. RNA technologies, including mRNA, circRNA, saRNA, and gene editing RNA, were also a significant topic, generating excitement, though efficient extra-hepatic delivery remains a critical challenge. The sector is also focusing on digitization and cloud-compatible data strategies to support AI and ML for rapid process and product development, emphasizing the need for robust data management.

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The cell therapy field has seen significant progress across manufacturing. Strategies have spanned multiple avenues from improved unit operations to all-in-one platforms, and integration of robotics for automation. Innovation in these verticals was a continued trend with many companies addressing these hurdles launching commercial or near commercial products. There has seemingly been a more recent shift towards enhancing product quality as opposed to simply attempting to increase quantity. Many discussions at the conference centered on capturing and utilizing more relevant data to drive process improvements. The conference atmosphere reflected renewed optimism, with attendees expressing confidence that these advancements could expand cell therapies to new indications.

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