Realising Full Robotic Automation for Industrial Advanced Therapy Manufacturing; Expanding Constellation Functionality at the Catapult Digital and Automation Test Beds.
A robotic manufacturing platform called *Constellation* is being upgraded to mass-produce cell and gene therapies for cancer and other diseases. Current manufacturing methods are too slow and expensive to meet demand. Producing these therapies by hand drives costs sky-high and limits global output to a trickle. The platform automates the entire process, using robots to run multiple production lines in parallel while adapting to different therapy designs without costly redevelopment. If successful, *Constellation* will allow manufacturers to scale up production rapidly and sustainably. This could slash treatment costs, making advanced therapies affordable and accessible to far more patients. The platform will be tested and validated at the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult’s Digital and Automation Test Beds in the UK, where therapy developers can trial it without risk. The project also feeds into future versions of the platform, strengthening the UK’s position in biomanufacturing, robotics, and AI innovation.
View original technical description
Advancements in CGTs for cancer and other high-prevalence conditions are set to transform modern medicine. However, scientific development is outpacing our manufacturing ability to produce these therapies at required scales to reach tens of thousands, let alone millions of eligible patients a year. Current global production (<11,000 therapies/year in 2023) is critically insufficient to meet this growing demand. Furthermore, high treatment costs (~£300k-£3M) due to labour-intensive manufacturing processes are unsustainable to ensure affordable and accessible treatments. In response, we developed _Constellation_, a ground-breaking, fully-automated, AI-ready and robotically-mediated manufacturing platform for scalable, high-throughput, cost-effective and sustainable cell therapy manufacturing. _Constellation_ robotically mediates parallelised automation of manufacturing operations, whilst flexibly adapting to therapy developers' processes to enable rapid throughput scaling to 10,000s and onwards to 100,000s therapies/year without process redevelopment delays and costs. We are partnered with Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGTC) to deploy _Constellation_ in their first-in-the-world, CGT-specific Digital and Automation Testbeds, serving as real-world test environments for accelerated development, testing and adoption of next-generation automation and digital technologies. This project builds on this first deployment and focuses on developing key functional improvements to expand _Constellation's_ capabilities and validating these through proof-of-concept studies using biological material. Through our partnership with CGTC, _Constellation_ will remain in CGTC's Testbeds long-term, accessible to therapy developers for de-risked testing and adoption. Project outcomes will also greatly de-risk and contribute to R&D for future _Constellation_ Versions. This project brings innovation towards cell therapy manufacturing to make more of these transformative treatments affordable and accessible at a time when manufacturing output needs to urgently increase. Significant long-term economical/societal impacts are expected from project outcomes that will boost the UK CGT's market growth and competitiveness globally, promoting world-leading biomanufacturing, robotics and AI innovation as per the UK Government's Life Sciences Vision.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know