Spotlight: The next biomanufacturing revolution: Why CAR-T needs its CHO moment

CAR-T has delivered transformative clinical outcomes, but its manufacturing model still resembles the early biologics era: complex, bespoke, variable and difficult to scale economically. Antibodies became a global therapeutic class only after stable cell lines made reproducible, scalable and platform-based manufacturing possible. This session asks whether lentiviral vector production is approaching the same inflection point — and what must change before CAR-T can move from specialised treatment to broader standard of care.
The antibody parallel: What CHO-based manufacturing teaches us about moving from artisanal production to industrialised biologics.
When early LV shortcuts become late-stage constraints: How transient, programme-specific production choices can create cost, variability and comparability burdens that only become visible when the therapy starts to succeed.
CMC debt starts early: Why vector-production choices made for speed can become late-stage liabilities for cost, comparability and scale, especially as LV moves beyond ex vivo CAR-T toward in vivo applications.
The pool-based bridge: How stable LV producer pools can accelerate early clinical material generation while preserving a route toward clonal producer cell lines for late-stage and commercial manufacturing.