Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited in Japan has announced the expansion of 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, US.

The facility provides end-to-end research and development capabilities and will accelerate Takeda’s efforts to develop next-generation cell therapies, initially focused on oncology with potential to expand into other therapeutic areas.

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.

It will be instrumental in building Takeda’s cell therapy capabilities and capacity to advance multiple next-generation oncology cell therapy platforms and programs with world-class collaborators including Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., Kyoto University (induced pluripotent stem cells), Adrian Hayday, Ph.D., Gamma Delta Therapeutics (gamma delta T-cells), Koji Tamada, M.D., Ph.D., Noile-Immune Biotech (armored CAR-Ts), Michel Sadelain, M.D., Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (next-generation CARs), and Katy Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D., The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (CAR-NK).