New investor Koch Disruptive Technologies led the funding round, in which from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Willett Advisors and DFJ Growth also participated, along with Cellares’ current investors Eclipse, Decheng Capital and 8VC. In relation to the financing, Koch’s managing director David Mauney will join Cellares’ board of directors.

Cellares’ new 118,000-square-foot IDMO smart factory will be capable of producing 40,000 cell therapy batches per year. By leveraging integrated technologies, the company said, these factories can produce 10 times more cell therapy batches per year than traditional CDMO facilities. Cellares plans to build such smart factories around the world to support the cell therapy industry.

Cellares currently operates two facilities in the US and is planning a third. Cellares’ first smart factory, located in San Francisco, is currently being used for preclinical process development and tech transfer of manual processes onto the Cell Shuttle for existing partners. The facility is scheduled to be GMP-ready in early 2024.

“Cell therapies have tremendous curative potential across a wide range of diseases. But right now, manufacturing by conventional CDMOs is expensive, failure-prone, and impossible to scale,” commented Mauney. “Cellares is driving transformation in the marketplace by combining an Industry 4.0 approach with full vertical integration. As the first IDMO, Cellares is empowering cell therapy companies to build viable businesses, remain competitive, and meet the needs of fast-growing patient populations,” he added.

“The creation of the first IDMO marks the beginning of a new era, in which cell therapies will finally be able to reach those in need,” said Fabian Gerlinghaus, CEO of Cellares. “We’ve developed integrated technologies for the entire drug development and manufacturing life cycle. Now we’re leveraging these technologies to offer global manufacturing services for the living drugs of the 21^st century. Our partners are some of the best academics, biotechs, and large pharma companies in the world. We’re enabling them to meet total patient demand, improve consistency and quality, lower manufacturing costs, and accelerate expansion to new markets.”

The company’s flexible manufacturing technology supports both autologous and allogeneic cell therapy processes and about 90% of cell therapy modalities. Cellares explained that its Cell Shuttle platform integrates all the technologies required for all unit operations and is successfully running CAR-T cell therapy processes with true walk-away, end-to-end automation.