Achieving Cell Therapy Success: Reducing Costs To Improve Patient Access

Cell therapies hold transformative potential for patients with few or no treatment options, offering hope where traditional approaches fall short. However, their path to commercialization remains challenging due to high production costs, limited scalability, and the need to demonstrate consistent clinical outcomes. With a growing number of cell therapies entering development, maintaining a low cost of goods sold (COGS) is increasingly critical — not only to ensure market viability but also to support broader patient access, while preserving product quality, comparability, and scalability.

To explore how developers can address these challenges, we spoke with Dwight Baker, Chief Innovation Officer, Advanced R&D at Resilience. According to Baker, cost considerations are becoming central to both strategic planning and investment decisions:

“COGS is a major driver for the ultimate price that patients and payers see. If you can’t get your cell therapy to a price point that’s reimbursable, it’s not going to be successful. We’re seeing more and more investors scrutinize developers’ manufacturing strategies when they’re making funding decisions — even at the early discovery stage. Today, investors understand how manufacturing costs and scalability impact a therapy’s chances of commercial success.”

To meet these expectations, therapeutic developers must embrace innovative manufacturing and quality control (QC) technologies. These tools not only help reduce costs, but also improve process consistency and product understanding, which can positively influence clinical performance. As the field evolves, technology is playing an increasingly vital role in enabling scalable, cost-effective production of complex cell therapies — marking a necessary shift from artisanal methods to industrialized manufacturing platforms.