“What we make here is cells.”
With crews still finishing electrical work and bulky lab equipment sitting ready for use, Dr. Jerome Ritz gave a tour this week of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s new, 30,000-square-foot cell manufacturing facility on the 12th floor of one of the hospital’s Boston buildings. It’s a factory of sorts, but one producing the potential medicines of the future, when treatments will be whipped up by editing DNA in cells that are then reintroduced into patients (some of these are already on the market) or even by converting one type of cell into another kind.
The aim of the $35 million facility is to “make” the variety of specialized cells that will be tested as treatments for everything from cancer to rare pediatric genetic diseases to neurodegenerative conditions and that meet the stringent regulatory and safety standards for human trials.
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