Fabian Gerlinghaus
Co-founder and CEO, Cellares
Fabian Gerlinghaus is driven by a strong sense of purpose and is passionate about building the future of cell therapy manufacturing. Prior to Cellares, he was Chief Innovation officer at Synthego and co-invented the company’s RNA synthesizer technology.
We asked…
What’s been the biggest breakthrough in cell & gene in recent years?
The recent approval for Yescarta in second-line (2L) relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) means that an order-of-magnitude more patients just became eligible for potentially curative therapies. One recent industry insight from Celltelligence suggested that moving from 3L to 2L will potentially double the targetable population in diffuse LBCL alone for CAR-T cell therapy. As cell therapies move up the treatment paradigm, and cell-based therapeutics are eventually approved to treat a range of cancers, the spotlight will turn (again) to manufacturing capacity. At Cellares, our belief is that high-throughput, end-to-end automation is set to revolutionize cell therapy manufacturing, allowing us to deliver more doses, at lower cost to meet the demand. It’s a truly exciting time for our industry!
What one thing do you think could improve the pharma industry?
Collective industry expertise has led to so many remarkable breakthroughs, but there are several things we can learn from other industries. For example, we ought to accelerate the adoption of automation and allow pharmaceutical companies to reduce their development and manufacturing costs, timelines, and realize improved product quality and consistency.
If you weren’t in the pharma industry, what would you be doing?
If I wasn’t building Cellares, I’d be developing technologies to help avert a climate disaster. That said, leading Cellares is incredibly rewarding! We’re building the most advanced manufacturing technology to accelerate access to life-saving cancer cures. Many patients will live as a result of our work and I am incredibly humbled to have the opportunity to work on such an important problem.
