Why Manufacturing Scalability Concerns Should Not Limit Cell Therapy Design

Advances in manufacturing technologies and clinical understanding are increasingly converging in the cell and gene therapy sector, says Edwin Stone, PhD, CEO of Cellular Origins in an interview with BioPharm International® during the2026 American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting, at which Dr. Stone gave the presentation, “Automatization of Cell Therapies.”

Dr. Stone highlights growing momentum around new editing technologies, electroporation systems, and alternative methods for targeting cells. He says the expanding range of available tools is enabling developers to combine manufacturing strategies with deeper clinical and biological insights in ways that were previously less connected.

“I think the scientific advances, the new tools, are a key part of that, making sure that tools are moving forward alongside the biological advances is really unlocking a huge range of things,” he notes.

Dr. Stone stresses that manufacturing scalability should not drive compromises in therapeutic design during early-stage development. Instead, he argues that researchers should prioritize creation of the most effective and safest biological products while automation and manufacturing specialists address scale-up challenges.

Why are scalable manufacturing strategies becoming critical in cell therapy development?

According to Dr. Stone, developers should be able to focus on understanding available manufacturing technologies and scalability considerations, and that those factors should not override decisions related to product quality or biological performance. He explains that concerns about future scalability can create pressure for scientific teams to alter development strategies prematurely.

“What I hate [is] the idea that the scientific community is second guessing the manufacturing and making compromises because they're concerned about the fact that maybe if they take route A or route B, that they won't be able to scale that,” Dr. Stone says.

He describes automation and scalable manufacturing as responsibilities that should fall primarily to manufacturing specialists rather than biological researchers. He adds that collaboration between scientific and manufacturing disciplines remains important, particularly as the industry seeks to improve both therapeutic efficacy and patient access.

Dr. Stone also notes that patient experiences continue to reinforce the importance of developing high-quality therapeutic products.

The ASCGT Annual Meeting was held May 11–15, 2026 in Boston.

Watch more insight from Dr. Stone at ASGCT.

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About the speaker

Edwin Stone, PhD, CEO, Cellular Origins

Dr. Stone has spent more than 20 years bringing new life science technologies to market, the last 10 of these focused on solving the challenges of cell therapy manufacturing. He established TTP’s cell and gene team which developed more than 10 cell therapy automation systems, including systems that are now in routine use for commercial therapy manufacture. Seeing the challenge of scale remained unaddressed, Dr. Stone co-founded Cellular Origins to enable patient access to cell therapies through scalable, cost-effective, and space-efficient manufacturing enabled by the Constellation automated cell therapy manufacturing platform. Dr. Stone holds a master’s degree in engineering and a PhD in robotic vehicles from the University of Cambridge.