Cellares Adds PACT Pharma to its Early Access Partnership Program

January 8, 2021 |

3 min read

- Under the partnership, PACT Pharma will provide the company with insight into autologous NeoTCR manufacturing workflows to help identify product-market fit and secure early access to the technology for an undisclosed amount - PACT Pharma is the second organization and first industry partner to join the program following Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellares Corporation, a company focused on revolutionizing cell therapy manufacturing, announced that PACT Pharma, Inc., a clinical-stage company developing transformational personalized NeoTCR-T cell therapies for the eradication of solid tumors, has joined its Early Access Partnership Program (EAPP). PACT Pharma is the second collaborator and first industry organization to join its EAPP, following Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Under the terms of the agreement, PACT Pharma secured early access to Cellares’ technology for an undisclosed amount.

“PACT Pharma is a leading developer of cutting-edge personalized medicines. We are honored by the trust PACT Pharma is placing in Cellares’ team and technology to create a path to commercial scale manufacturing designed to be robust and cost-effective,” said Cellares co-founder and chief executive officer Fabian Gerlinghaus. “We look forward to working together to ensure we are creating a manufacturing platform that fits the needs of the industry at large and PACT Pharma in particular.”

As part of Cellares’ EAPP, PACT Pharma will provide the company with insight into autologous NeoTCR manufacturing workflows and participate in user studies. PACT Pharma will also provide feedback on Cell Shuttle hardware and software to inform user needs and contribute to product requirements and system specifications.

“Currently, no solution exists that scales to meet the needs of cell therapy manufacturers at every phase of the development and commercialization process,” said Tim Moore, president and chief operating officer of PACT Pharma. “PACT Pharma is excited to be working with Cellares and contribute to the future of cell therapy manufacturing. Cellares’ next-generation cell therapy platform is designed to enable closed, automated and scalable manufacturing of cell therapies like our autologous NeoTCR-T cell therapies. We seized the opportunity to weigh in on Cellares’ manufacturing platform while it’s still in development, enabling PACT to potentially usher in a new future for cell therapy manufacturing.”

About The Cell Shuttle
The Cell Shuttle is an automated and closed end-to-end manufacturing solution that is flexible and scalable, enabling customers to run the exact processes specified for their cell therapy. Compared with currently available cell therapy manufacturing methods, this next-generation platform enables a three-fold reduction in process failure rates and is capable of producing 10+ patient doses in parallel, which increases manufacturing scalability by an order of magnitude. This will reduce the per-patient manufacturing cost by up to 70 percent for most processes.

About Cellares Corporation
Cellares is creating the future of cell therapy manufacturing and accelerating access to life-saving cell therapies. The company is developing a one-of-a-kind solution to overcome the limitations associated with manufacturing cell therapies that are more affordable and widely available to patients in need. With Cellares’ proprietary platform—The Cell Shuttle—biopharma companies, academic research centers and CDMOs will no longer have to compromise by either choosing a manufacturing platform that is semi-automated but lacks workflow flexibility, or one that provides customization but not the end-to-end automation needed to manufacture at scale. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, Calif. For more information visit www.cellares.com.

About PACT Pharma
PACT Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering individualized, non-viral precision genome engineered, tumor-specific T cell therapies for the treatment of patients with solid cancers. PACT Pharma is now enrolling patients in its first-in-human Phase 1 clinical trial.

Each person’s cancer emerges with a private signature of mutations. PACT Pharma identifies these cancer mutation targets (neoantigens) for each person, biochemically verifies and captures T cells from their blood and uses its proprietary, cutting edge (non-viral) precision genome engineering technologies to manufacture a personalized immune cell therapy product for each person with cancer.

For more information please visit www.pactpharma.com.

CONTACTS

Cellares

For Media:
Sylvia Aranda
W2O Group
saranda@w2ogroup.com

For Potential Partners:
Mark Flower
Cellares Corporation
bd@cellares.com

PACT Pharma

Glover Park Group (GPG)
Sarah Sutton
ssutton@gpg.com
202-337-0808

Uneek Mehra
umehra@pactpharma.com