Like many in the pharmaceutical industry, Carol Houts, Germfree’s chief strategy officer, began her career at the bench before taking on roles in regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance, compliance, and other areas. She met Keith Landy, Germfree’s CEO at the time nearly eight years ago. At the time, the company worked largely on building modular cleanroom environments for use in healthcare but was exploring opportunities in biopharma, specifically the cell and gene therapy (CGT) space. Landy, who was battling glioblastoma and has since passed away, was particularly passionate about bringing Germfree’s cleanroom infrastructure into the cell and gene therapy space, Houts told GEN in an interview. “That drive for getting patients’ access to therapies is embedded in the fabric at Germfree.”

And the drive is now bearing fruit. Germfree announced a partnership with Caring Cross focused on providing patients with affordable access to CGTs starting with CAR T-cell therapies for cancer. Caring Cross is a nonprofit with a mission to accelerate the development of advanced medicines and ensure access to cures for all patients, everywhere. The partners are creating a decentralized, point-of-care manufacturing model that combines Germfree’s mobile cleanroom units with Caring Cross’ manufacturing technologies and pipeline of cell and gene therapy products. The result is a comprehensive, end-to-end infrastructure for manufacturing cell and gene therapies at the point-of-care.