Cambridge, Edinburgh and London, UK, July 11, 2025 – Cellular Origins, a TTP company, focused on enabling scalable, cost-effective, and efficient robotic manufacture of cell and gene therapies (CGTs), the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult), an independent innovation and technology organisation specialising in the advancement of the cell and gene therapy industry, and Resolution Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering regenerative macrophage therapy to treat inflammatory and fibrotic diseases, today announce the formation of a consortium. The consortium has been awarded a cross-industry Smart Grant of £1 million from Innovate UK, UK’s national innovation agency.

The project aims to use novel technologies to deliver, for the first time internationally, a globally-unique, hyper-efficient, fully automated, scalable cell therapy manufacturing platform. The project commenced on July 1, 2025, and will last for 20 months.

The consortium partners have chosen to collaborate by combining their respective expertise in robotic and digital technologies, manufacturing processes, operations and facilities management, therapy development, novel product processes, and patient delivery. The partners intend to expand this collaboration further through future joint development and delivery capabilities. Providing additional support to the project are ScaleReady with its G-Rex bioreactor platform, and Autolomous with its AutoloMATE eBMR solution.

“Despite the incredible therapeutic performance of cell therapies, therapy development has greatly outpaced the ability for these treatments to be manufactured in sufficient quantities to reach all eligible patients. Manual manufacturing has only been able to be scaled up to deliver a few thousand patient doses per year.  The CGT sector is currently only capable of manufacturing sufficient doses to treat less than 7% of eligible patients globally,” said Edwin Stone, CEO, Cellular Origins. “To deliver therapies to the patients that need them requires fully automated manufacturing of the type that has revolutionised other high-tech manufacturing.  This requires solving the cell therapy specific technology challenges that allow the adoption of advanced robotics and AI into cell therapy manufacturing. This partnership with the CGT Catapult and Resolution Therapeutics, and the funding by Innovate UK, will deliver the most advanced, fully tested, fully automated robotically operated CGT manufacturing platform to the market. Cellular Origins’ already established network of partnerships, most recently added to with our collaborations with Cytiva, Fresenius Kabi, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Johnson & Johnson, gives this specific consortium access to proven robotically automated manufacturing technology.”

The project will deliver full integration of the hardware and software of Constellation, Cellular Origins’ CGT robotic manufacturing platform, at the CGT Catapult’s Digital and Automation Testbeds in the Stevenage Manufacturing Innovation Centre, UK. These Testbeds serve as good manufacturing practice (GMP)-mirroring sandbox environments for de-risked and accelerated testing and adoption of next-generation technologies. CGT Catapult will commission the platform within the real-world manufacturing environment of its Testbeds to support the national and international roll-out of Constellation. This world-first installation will be fully accessible to collaborators through the Digital and Automation Testbeds.

“CGTs continue to deliver unparallelled therapeutic efficacy and life-saving or transforming options for a plethora of patients with currently limited therapeutic options. There is an opportunity for the UK to lead innovation in this sector, and ensure patients have access to the therapies they need,” said Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive, CGT Catapult. “One of the most challenging problems to international delivery of these therapies to patients continues to be manufacturing. It is clear that robotics, AI and digitisation have now advanced to provide the required solution. The combination of three UK leaders in their respective CGT sectors will result in the reduction of costs and increase in manufacturing efficiency and capacity required to bring transformative therapies to patients. The funding by Innovate UK will give further support to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of CGT development.”

The project will also benefit from the expert input, advice and direction of Resolution Therapeutics. Resolution will provide key corporate, clinical and commercial expertise as a therapy developer of a promising and exciting new type of cell therapy called Regenerative Macrophage Therapy (RMT) with lead asset to treat end-stage liver disease. Resolution will inform the development direction and viability to ensure the adaptability of the platform for novel cell therapies such as for Resolution’s groundbreaking macrophage therapy products. This will result in the route map and the transformation from manual clinical-scale manufacturing to fully automate, GMP-ready, commercial-scale CGT manufacturing at the scale required to meet areas of significant unmet need.

“The field of cell and gene therapy (CGT) continues to expand, delivering an increasing range of innovative platforms with the potential to transform patient outcomes—such as our Regenerative Macrophage Therapy (RMT) platform,” said Dr. Amir Hefni, Chief Executive Officer of Resolution Therapeutics. “Our regenerative macrophage therapy program is now in the clinic. Our lead asset, RTX001, is currently in Phase 1/2 studies for the treatment of end-stage liver disease, with additional programs in development for a number of inflammatory and fibrotic diseases, including graft-versus-host disease and lung fibrosis.  We are also collaborating with the CGT Catapult and Cellular Origins to leverage advanced automated robotics technology. This partnership will enable the scalable and cost-efficient manufacturing of next-generation CGTs, ensuring greater patient access to our therapies.”

Cellular Origins has already completed pre-activity for the project by installing the first Constellation system at the CGT Catapult’s Digital and Automation Testbeds in Stevenage, UK. The intention is for full market supply and application of the automated robotics manufacturing platform for CGT developers, integrating known and proven instrumentation from trusted third-party suppliers with minimum process change, within Cellular Origins’ workstations and factory installations.

About Cellular Origins www.cellularorigins.com 

Cellular Origins, a TTP Company, is focused on enabling scalable, reproduceable and efficient manufacture of cell and gene therapies (CGTs).

Despite the incredible potential for CGTs in the treatment of disease, emerging therapies remain unavailable to many patients due to insufficient expertise and manufacturing capability for affordable production. With an increasing number of approved CGTs currently reaching the market, the disconnect between innovative therapies and manufacturing capabilities has led to an urgent need for solutions that provide large-scale access to cost-effective, next-generation therapeutics.

Created to provide therapeutic developers and CDMOs access to the equipment they want, at the scale they need, Cellular Origins is bringing advanced automation from the industry 4.0 revolution to the forefront of CGT. 

Cellular Origins’ Constellation is a closed, configurable, robotic platform that enables scalable, reproduceable, cost-effective and space efficient advanced therapy manufacture, consisting of highly flexible mobile robots with proprietary future-proofed, automated effectors for sterile fluid transfer. The modular platform can be seamlessly integrated into new and existing workflows with minimal changes, alleviating the need for process redevelopment without constraining innovation.

To find out more about Cellular Origins and its innovative cell therapy manufacture solutions, please visit https://cellularorigins.com/. Follow Cellular Origins on X (@CellularOrigins) and LinkedIn (@CellularOrigins).

About the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult is an independent innovation and technology organisation committed to the advancement of the cell and gene therapy industry with a vision of a thriving industry delivering life changing advanced therapies to the world. Its aim is to create powerful collaborations which overcome challenges to the advancement of the sector. The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult was established by and works in partnership with Innovate UK. For more information, please visit https://ct.catapult.org.uk/ or https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/.

About Resolution Therapeutics

Resolution Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on pioneering regenerative macrophage therapy (RMT) in inflammatory and fibrotic diseases. The Company leverages its proprietary platform to develop macrophages with pro-regenerative properties for superior patient outcomes. Resolution’s initial focus is on developing RTX001, its lead product with first-in-class potential supported by preclinical data demonstrating anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory advantages relative to non-engineered macrophages, to treat patients with end-stage liver disease. The Company is also advancing efforts to expand the potential of its platform into inflammatory and fibrotic indications beyond liver disease, including graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) and lung fibrosis. Resolution, a spinout from Professor Stuart Forbes’s lab at the University of Edinburgh, is based in Edinburgh and London. Learn more by visiting resolution-tx.com and engage with us on LinkedIn.

For more information please contact:

Neil Hunter

Hunter PR

[email protected]

+44 7821 255568