Sheba Medical Center & Lonza Pharma Debut Unique Technology for CAR-T Immunotherapy

Sheba Medical Center and Lonza, the renowned Swiss-based, bio-pharma company are collaborating on point-of-care cell-therapy manufacturing using a state-of-the-art Cocoon^TM platform. The partnership will enable Sheba to vastly streamline its in-house cell manufacturing process and produce genetically engineered human CAR-T cells for applications in treating critically ill oncology patients.

This collaborative agreement brings together a leading academic clinical center and an established development and manufacturing partner with the goal of delivering potentially curative therapies to a greater number of patients with advanced hematological malignancies. Sheba Medical Center has a proven track record of treating oncology patients using novel immunotherapy treatments such as CAR-T.  Lonza will leverage its expertise in autologous cell-therapy process development to transfer Sheba’s current open, manual protocols into Lonza’s closed, automated Cocoon^TM platform.

"With the collaborative potential of this venture, we look forward to jointly leading the next personalized cell-therapy revolution. Lonza’s Cocoon^TM platform provides us the ability to manufacture cell therapies faster and closer to the point-of-care and in a scalable manner at a lower cost so that we can treat more oncology patients who turn to us as a last resort," said Professor Dror Harats, MD, Deputy Director for Research and Development and Director for Clinical Trials at Sheba Medical Center.