Cellares, a pioneer in automated cell therapy manufacturing, in collaboration with Mitsui Fudosan, announces the establishment of Japan’s first next-gen commercial production site for CAR-T cell therapies. The facility is under construction in Kashiwa City, a vibrant urban center located approximately 30 km northeast of central Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture. As part of the extensive Tokyo metropolitan region, Kashiwa serves as a booming biotech hub. This groundbreaking Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) Smart Factory is expected to provide employment to 350 people while enabling scalable and cost-effective cell therapy manufacturing, addressing an urgent need for patients in Japan and neighboring regions.
The facility, set to open in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan, will utilize Cellares’ state-of-the-art technology platforms, the Cell Shuttle™ and Cell Q™, to automate cell therapy manufacturing and quality control. The technology reduces batch prices by up to 50% and eliminates the manufacturing bottlenecks faced by conventional CDMOs that use manual processes. Additionally, the entire Smart Factory will be integrated and optimized to eliminate any downstream bottlenecks as well.
The new site’s impact extends beyond patient care. By accelerating the availability of CAR-T treatments, this initiative has the potential to help advance the development and approval of CAR-T therapeutics in Japan. Once the IDMO Smart Factory is online, technical transfers between Cellares facilities in other regions are expected to be a seamless, rapid, software-enabled process.