Cellular Origins and Fresenius Kabi partner to drive automation in CGT manufacturing

Robotics manufacturing platform developer Cellular Origins announced a development partnership with global healthcare company Fresenius Kabi. The two firms will develop integration strategies for Fresenius Kabi’s portfolio of cell-therapy technologies within Cellular Origins’ Constellation automation platform.  

The companies will focus their initial research on integrating Fresenius Kabi’s Cue cell-processing system – which specializes in automated and precise small-volume cell processing – into the Constellation platform. 

“Our cell-therapy technologies are designed with automation at their core to provide new levels of precision and efficiency,” said Christian Hauer, president MedTech at Fresenius Kabi. “By working closely with the team at Cellular Origins, we hope to advance the CGT industry by helping therapy developers embrace automation during the production process with the goal of ultimately benefitting patients.” 

The collaboration aims to address manufacturing shortages for cell and gene therapies (CGTs). The Constellation system is designed to enable cell therapy developers to automate their manufacturing processes with little manual input. 

“Cellular Origins has developed Constellation to enable fully industrialized manufacture of cell and gene therapies,” said Edwin Stone, CEO at Cellular Origins. “Forming strong collaborations is essential to ensuring the industry can implement the transformative power of automation whilst using the tools that are best for the biology and, therefore, for patients. Fresenius Kabi is an industry-leading developer of automated technologies to support the production of cell therapies.” 

The company originally launched its Constellation platform at the 2023 International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) annual meeting to automate advanced therapy manufacturing. Since then, the company has signed deals to improve integration of the platform. “Our configurable and automated robotic technology brings the revolution of industry 4.0 to the forefront of CGT, and enables efficient, scalable, automated manufacture, without process redevelopment,” said Stone during the launch. 

Today’s announcement follows Cellular Origin’s September partnership, wherein the company released news of its collaboration with 3P innovation, an engineering company and supplier of fill–finish equipment. That partnership was also signed to complement the Constellation platform, that time in conjunction with 3P’s cryoFIL cryovial filling system.  

And that news follows a busy summer from Cellular Origins, which appointed Geoffrey Hodge as non-executive director and acquired intellectual property (IP) rights to the autologous cell therapy industrial automation (ACTIA) platform that he developed while working as CEO of SOTIO Biotech US.