Thermo Fisher Scientific and UCSF Companion to open New Cell Remedy Manufacturing Web site in San Francisco

Thermo Fisher Scientific and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have partnered to open a new cGMP cell therapy manufacturing facility adjacent to UCSF Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus. The facility will be used by both UCSF researchers and Thermo Fisher Scientific customers.

According to Thermo Fisher Scientific (and many others in the industry), challenges in manufacturing cell therapies — especially at scale — are impeding wider adoption. The partnership was first announced in 2021 with the aim of overcoming some of these difficulties.

“By bringing increased capacity and extensive cell therapy experience to the city of San Francisco, we hope to accelerate the development of advanced cell therapy at UCSF and with the surrounding life sciences community, which is home to more than 200 biotechnology companies.” said Dan Herring, general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher Scientific. “In the future, we also hope to expand our partnerships with academia and industry focused on cell therapies and industry in the development of novel cell therapies and other immune cell-based therapies to treat patients with blood cancers, as well as those with solid tumors.” to support. ”

The facility will provide process and analytical development capabilities, as well as clinical and commercial cGMP manufacturing services for autologous and allogeneic cell therapies. It includes six individual, user-configurable GMP production suites (with expansion capacity) and self-contained HVAC and associated infrastructure to protect against cross-contamination.

UCSF researchers will use the facility to develop new therapies, with an initial focus on treating glioblastoma, multiple myeloma and other cancers using CAR-T and CRISPR technologies.

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