Turner & Townsend, the construction project expert, and Hitachi Plant Services have been awarded a contract to build Japan’s first cell‑therapy manufacturing facility for the biotech company Cellares.
“As the first facility of its kind in Asia … we’re proud to play a role in making that difference,” said Kajiura Hisanao, Managing Director of Turner & Townsend in Japan.
The new facility, dubbed Cellares Smart Factory – Asia, will be located in Kashiwa City.
Scaling production of CAR-T therapy doses
Turner & Townsend will handle the project management of the project, while Hitachi Plant Services will handle the facility engineering.
The plant will house the Cellares’ Cell Shuttle area for manufacturing and the Cell Q area for quality control.
The technologies will help dramatically scale production by installing more than 30 Cell Shuttle units, which are expected to serve 75,000 patients annually.
The facility is expected to produce about ten times more personalised doses than a conventionally staffed contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMO) at the same scale.
Operational costs and cleanroom footprint for the factory are projected to be cut in half.
The planned factory will occupy roughly 16,000 sqm across four stories of the Mitsui Link Lab.
Construction will begin in November 2025, with commercial operations expected to start by 2027.
Japan as an emerging life sciences hub
The factory’s location in Kashiwa City is strategic.
In the northwest of Kashiwa City is a new town project called Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City, which has been designated by the Cabinet Office as one of the eight bio-innovation hubs under the Greater Tokyo BioCommunity initiative.
The Cellars factory in Japan will help simplify logistics, especially for cold-chain handling, and enable faster “vein-to-vein” timelines for patients.
In CAR-T therapies, vein-to-vein time refers to the entire process from the initial collection of a patient's T-cells to the reinfusion of the engineered product.
The new space will include areas for manufacturing, quality control, supply management, administration, and mechanical systems.
At full scale, the factory could dramatically expand access to CAR‑T therapies across Asia, helping to drive down costs and reduce manufacturing bottlenecks.
Automation will also enable faster technology transfer between Cellares’ global production sites, increasing flexibility and speed.
Based in the US, the pharmaceutical manufacturer Cellares has been working to expand their global operations for cell therapies.
The company is also forward thinking in running their operations and has previously partnered with TOMI Environmental Solutions to put ionized Hydrogen Peroxide (iHP) disinfection technology into the automated cell therapy manufacturing process.