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While cell and gene therapy has got better at having treatments approved, turning approvals into mainstream medicine is a different problem — one of scale. Cellular Origins' Jason Jones argues that full robotic automation of manufacturing is what stands between a few thousand doses today into hundreds of thousands in the near future.
- Jones has spent 24 years in the field, from bone marrow transplant and post-transplant immunotherapies into manufacturing technology. He now leads global business development at Cellular Origins.
- The platform, in his analogy, is the frame of a jigsaw: the robotics don't replace the pieces, they hold the jigsaw together — automating the proven devices developers already use from the likes of Cytiva, Fresenius and Thermo.
- Developers spend five or six years validating a process through clinical manufacturing and won't change it at approval, so Cellular Origins automates the existing process with robotics and digital software rather than forcing a new one.
- Standardising so every product runs identically every time, and making every second of a product's journey through manufacturing traceable can see labour costs reduced by 90-95 %.
- The scale gap in numbers: the field's leaders make around 5,000–6,000 products a year today. With solid-tumour and autoimmunity therapies coming, Jones says the industry needs to plan for 50,000–100,000 a year.
- Momentum: a newly announced collaboration with Immatics on its TCR therapies for solid tumours joins an existing relationship with Johnson & Johnson — with more partnerships, he hints, expected before the end of June.
Onyx caught up with Jason Jones, Head of Global Business Development at Cellular Origins, at the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy 2026 Annual Meeting in Dublin to talk about automating manufacturing for scale, integrating proven devices, and what it will take to reach solid tumours.
With thanks to the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy for welcoming Onyx Live to Dublin.
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