Astellas Pharma and Yaskawa Electric Corporation will establish a joint venture to develop a cell therapy manufacturing platform through robotics and will offer access to startups and academic institutions.
The manufacturing platform will utilize a dual-arm robot, known as ‘Maholo,’ developed by Yaskawa’s subsidiary, Robotic Biology Institute. The partners will use Maholo to explore a manufacturing process with high precision and reproducibility and optimize the digitized manufacturing process with AI. They will then transfer the digitalized manufacturing process to the robot at other manufacturing facilities and develop a cell manufacturing platform that meets GMP conditions.
Astellas and Yaskawa will develop manufacturing processes for cell therapy product candidates of partners, such as academia and startups, as well as manufacture investigational drugs in GMP facilities.
The collaboration, which was first revealed in May 2024, aims to tackle the known issues in the industry related to the accuracy and reproducibility of cell manufacturing, as well as address the need for a skilled workforce.
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