Based in Wallonia, Cellistic develops large-scale cell therapies aimed at treating onco-immune diseases.
Wallonia is home to many companies active in the biotechnology sector. Among them is Cellistic, located in Mont-Saint-Guibert. Cellistic is setting a new standard in cell therapy by enabling companies to create off-the-shelf, affordable treatments with significantly reduced development time and cost.
“We offer the development of cell lines and GMP manufacturing of various allogeneic cell therapies derived from iPSCs, with a focus on immune effector cells. These include NK cells, T cells, macrophages, and others that our clients and partners wish to use to treat various types of cancers, including both liquid and solid tumors. Nowadays, some are also targeting autoimmune diseases,” explains Tarran Pierfelice, Chief Commercial Officer at Cellistic.
The company’s goal? To make cell therapies accessible. “We know that cell therapies work. They’ve treated patients who had no other options left. Terminal cancer patients have been treated and cured. But historically, these have been autologous cell therapies. That means one batch treats one patient—it’s personalized medicine. The issue with autologous therapies is that you can't produce them in large quantities quickly. That makes it hard to reach patients promptly. It’s also very expensive. Our solution to these problems is to use iPSCs, or induced pluripotent stem cells, to derive cell therapies: we can take cells from a single donor, create these pluripotent stem cells, and then differentiate them into the desired cell type. When done this way, you can produce large batches. An allogeneic cell therapy is off-the-shelf and allows you to treat hundreds of patients with a single batch. It also significantly reduces production costs,” elaborates Tarran Pierfelice.
Cellistic’s added value lies in its exclusive focus on iPSCs. “Many of our competitors work across several different modalities. That can include biologics, autologous cell therapies, gene therapies, and then also manufacturing iPSC-based cell therapies. That’s great, but it’s a lot to juggle. At Cellistic, we focus solely on iPSCs. We see them as the future—and it’s all we do. We have over 15 years of experience in the field,” notes Tarran Pierfelice.
This week, Cellistic is attending the Bio International Convention. “BIO is one of the best conferences of the year. It really brings together all the decision-makers and business development leaders, from small biotech firms to large pharmaceutical groups. For Cellistic, our goal is to connect with our current partners and also meet new potential collaborators,” concludes Tarran Pierfelice.
Isabelle Anneet (AWEX)
