Advanced Therapies Week 2022 | Adapting cell therapies to solid tumors

Nina Bauer, PhD, MBA, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, outlines the key differences in manufacturing cell therapies for liquid and solid tumors and comments on some of the changes that need to be made to meet the future demand of cell therapies for solid tumors. Dr Bauer explains that cell therapies are still in their infancy and manufacturing therapies for both liquid and solid tumors require further optimization. Nevertheless, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been significantly more successful in liquid tumors due to easier tumor access and several changes need to be made for widespread adoption in solid tumors. Ongoing research is currently investigating which immune cells are the most efficient at penetrating solid tumors, as well as strategies to produce larger quantities of cells for a wider group of patients. This interview took place at Advanced Therapies Week 2022.