Cellares and City of Hope Sign Deal to Automate Solid Tumor CAR T Cell Therapy Manufacturing

Cellares and City of Hope, one of the largest cancer R&D treatment organizations in the U.S., said they will collaborate to evaluate automated manufacturing of City of Hope’s investigational gene-modified CAR T cell therapy targeting glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive solid tumor brain cancer with limited treatment options.

City of Hope is a leader in CAR T for glioblastoma and was the first to administer CAR T cell therapy locally in the brain through direct injection to the tumor site. Its CARpool program, an IL13RA2-EGFR CAR T cell therapy, targets glioblastoma, a disease with an estimated global incidence of approximately 300,000 new diagnoses annually.

City of Hope will evaluate Cellares’ Cell Shuttle automated manufacturing platform and Cell Q automated quality control system to enable high-throughput manufacturing and quality control of its CARpool program. By engaging at the preclinical stage, the collaboration plans to establish platform processes and analytics purpose-built for solid tumor CAR T programs, designed to accelerate advancement into clinical trials while enabling scalable manufacturing to meet global patient demand.

“Glioblastoma remains one of the most challenging solid tumors to treat due to its highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, antigen heterogeneity and limited persistence of engineered T cells,” said Christine Brown, PhD, deputy director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories at City of Hope.

“Advancing CAR T therapies in this setting requires not only rigorous translational science but also highly controlled and reproducible manufacturing. We are excited to incorporate automation early in development to standardize processes and analytics, enabling the consistency required for effective clinical translation.”

“Manual, fragmented manufacturing and quality control cannot meet the scale required for large solid tumor patient populations,” added said Fabian Gerlinghaus, co-founder and CEO of Cellares. “By collaborating with City of Hope, we will remove these bottlenecks through automation, enabling reproducible manufacturing, lowering failure rates, and expanding patient access at commercial scale.”

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