Towards a Mass Customisation Platform for the Biomanufacturing of Gene and Cell Therapy Products - Abstract
The recent FDA approval of CAR-T cell therapy products has generated much excitement in the field, but also met with some reservation due to their hefty price tags. Because cell therapy products are living tissues that need to be individualized to the patients to prevent host immune response, traditional manufacturing practice for biopharmaceutics cannot be readily adopted. One way in which economy of scale could be achieved for cell therapy products is through a mass customisation platform, which is a manufacturing technique that combines the flexibility of custom-made products with the low unit costs of mass production. In this perspective article, we outline a mass customization platform as a mean to achieve economies of scale and product personalization for the biomanufacturing of patient-specific gene and cell therapy products. To help illustrate this concept, we compared Vistaprint’s approach to mass customization of business cards as a real-life example in platform design.