Takeda opens R&D cell therapy manufacturing facility in Boston

Sept. 15, 2020

Takeda Pharmaceutical have expanded its cell therapy manufacturing capabilities with the opening of a new 24,000 square-foot R&D cell therapy manufacturing facility at its R&D headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. The facility provides end-to-end research and development capabilities and aims to accelerate Takeda’s efforts to develop next-generation cell therapies, initially focused on oncology with potential to expand into other therapeutic areas.

The drugmaker is establishing a highly differentiated immuno-oncology pipeline and diving into new modalities and mechanisms with curative potential. "With three oncology cell therapy programs in the clinic and two more targeted to enter the clinic in fiscal year 2021, we are working with urgency and purpose for patients," said Chris Arendt, head of Takeda’s oncology therapeutic area unit. "This new facility helps us rapidly scale our manufacturing capabilities so we can simultaneously advance multiple highly differentiated cell therapy programs."

Oncology cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that uses genetically modified immune cells to find and kill cancer cells. According to Takeda, each oncology cell therapy platform has unique process requirements for how they are formulated, manufactured, transported and administered to patients. Next-generation cell therapy is one of the multiple investigational platforms that Takeda is researching in oncology as part of its focus on redirected immunity. Takeda’s pipeline of immuno-oncology programs harnesses innate immunity, including through cell therapies, immune engager platforms, innate immuno-modulation, novel-scaffold immune check point platforms and oncolytic viruses.

The R&D cell therapy manufacturing facility will produce cell therapies for clinical evaluation from discovery through pivotal Phase 2b trials. The current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) facility is designed to meet all U.S., E.U. and Japanese regulatory requirements for cell therapy manufacturing to support Takeda clinical trials around the world.

Takeda and MD Anderson are developing an allogeneic cell therapy product (TAK-007), a Phase 1/2 CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor-directed natural killer (CAR-NK) cell therapy with potential for off-the-shelf use being studied in patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Two additional Phase 1 studies of Takeda cell therapy programs were also recently initiated: 19(T2)28z1xx CAR T cells (TAK-940), a next-generation CAR-T signaling domain developed in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) to treat relapsed/refractory B-cell cancers, and a cytokine and chemokine armored CAR-T (TAK-102) developed in partnership with Noile-Immune Biotech to treat GPC3-expressing previously treated solid tumors. 

Read the full Takeda release