TrakCel has announced a consortium including itself, the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, Rexgenero Ltd and Fisher Bioservices (part of Thermo Fisher Scientific) has secured funding of £1.4m from Innovate UK to lead an industrial research project.

The project will focus on and design a cost effective commercial manufacturing strategy for Rexgenero’s novel autologous cell therapy REX-001. It has been shown to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels to restore blood supply to the limb, alleviate symptoms and improve quality of life of people with critical limb ischemia (CLI).

The research project will include process redesign, automation and scale out for commercial manufacture. The project is expected to run for twenty one months. In addition to the £1.4m funding from Innovate UK, the consortium partners will invest a further £0.4m.

TrakCel will be developing a needle to needle supply chain software management platform for the consortium. This will enable the consortium to establish a robust supply chain from the scheduled collection of patient samples, tracking throughout the manufacturing process and delivery back to that same patient. It will also provide real time audit logs, chain of custody records, reduce the implementation risks associated with disparate, paper-based systems and therefore accelerate the scale up and scale out of REX-001.

Ravi Nalliah, CEO of TrakCel, said “The commercialisation phase for cell therapies requires multi-layered supply chains involving many patients, individuals and organisations. This is why consortiums and organisations focused on commercializing cell therapies require an advanced software developer for supply chain tracking and orchestration. By adding TrakCel’s capabilities to international consortia, such as this specific UK-based consortium concentrating on the REX-001 project, this enables a more effective commercialisation strategy for cell therapies to reach patients more effectively.”

TrakCel is a designer, developer and deliverer of integrated technologies, and was specifically created in 2012 to manage the international autologous and allogeneic cell, gene and immunotherapy supply chain. The company’s software platform has been developed in collaboration with, and increasingly adopted by leading companies in the cell, gene and immunotherapy industries. TrakCel is headquartered in Cardiff, with US offices in California and New Jersey. They aim to employ over a hundred people by end of 2019, following a number of senior appointments in 2016 and 2017.