Gracell reports more potent CD19 CAR T using single-day manufacturing platform

Gracell said its platform was able to manufacture in a single day a CD19-targeting CAR T cell therapy shown to be 20-40 times more potent than conventionally manufactured CAR T therapies in a first-in-human non-IND study to treat B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The data reported Tuesday also showed that the therapy, dubbed CD19-F-CAR-T, was safe.

Gracell Biotechnologies Co. Ltd. (Suzhou, China) said that compared with the one-day turn around of its FasT CAR-T manufacturing platform, conventional CAR T therapies require about two weeks to manufacture. Furthermore, the company said CD19-F-CAR-T has "superior expansion capability, with a younger and less exhausted phenotype" than its conventionally manufactured counterparts...