Automation: what will the cell therapy laboratory of the future look like?

With the recent successes of CAR-T cell therapies there has been a renewed interest in bioprocessing and the manufacturing facilities required to meet the demands. Increasing the scale of any process has potential risks as well as rewards. While the drive to automation is clear, there is a lot of debate on the strategy. The decision on whether and when to automate a particular step can have long-term consequences on the therapies’ cost-of-goods (COGs) and their successes. Automating the most complex and error-prone steps of a process is thought to be the best alternative to manual processes. However, automation may not be possible or even recommended for all steps in a process. Here, we examine both the barriers and the advantages of automation. Additionally, a detailed discussion of automating the autologous CAR-T cell process will look at each step from collection to infusion, and discuss the current automation offerings and speculate on potential future process changes. Through application of process analytics, we can gain a deeper understanding of the processes’ consistency and tailor automation to fit the process. New potency assays will improve manufacturing processes and ensure the delivery of a safe and effective product. These advancements will then shape the cell therapy laboratory of our future.