Cardinal Health’s Aklilu Tedla Discusses Logistics of Allogeneic CAR T-Cell Therapies

Allogeneic, or off-the-shelf, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies will bring new logistical challenges, said Aklilu Tedla, vice president, insights and engagement, regulatory science, cell and gene, Cardinal Health.

Transcript

How might the advent of allogeneic CAR T-cell therapies create new logistic problems for storing the treatments and being prepared for potential adverse events?

Logistics, I think you're going to need greater visibility into the supply chain. Right? And you're going to have to think about cold storage and visibility throughout the entire logistical journey. Okay? So, I think that's going to be new, and actually worth thinking about that long and hard about what role we can play there to make sure that the logistical aspects are being met.

This is one of the things that are actually high risk for manufacturers of these therapies, right, is they're innovating to bring them to the market, but then, how can they make sure that as they send them to the patient, that there's visibility into the supply chain, so you can make sure not just about the outcome, but the safety of the products.

You can think of adverse events in terms of at the time of administration, which I think where they're administered today, in hospitals, or in certain settings, you can have the type of monitoring that’s there. What I think is important is how do you monitor continuously? That raises questions about how do you monitor in the home, and in other areas that the patients are, and over what time? So, I think that is something that we're, for example, actively trying to solve.