CELL THERAPY CONFERENCE 2026
From Starting Cell to Scalable Manufacturing Building Consistent High Quality Cell Therapy Processes
Day One: 8th December 2026, London, United Kingdom
CELL SOURCING, ISOLATION & CONSISTENCY
09:00 Moderator Opening Remarks
09:10 From Donor to Dose: Tackling Variability at the Starting-Cell Stage
The quality and consistency of a cell therapy product are fundamentally influenced by the starting material. Donor-to-donor, tissue-to-tissue, and run-to-run variability can affect cell phenotype, viability, potency, and differentiation potential. This talk will explore practical strategies for sourcing, isolating, and characterising starting cells to establish greater consistency and improve downstream manufacturing performance.
09:30 Getting the Starting Material Right: Cell Sourcing, Isolation & Characterisation
A robust cell therapy process starts with well-defined, reproducible starting material. This session will examine how sourcing decisions, isolation methods, and early-stage cell characterisation can influence product quality. It will highlight approaches to control variability in cell phenotype, viability, potency, and differentiation state before cells enter the manufacturing process.
09:50 Controlling Cell-to-Cell Variability: Building Consistency into Cell Therapy Manufacturing
Cell variability remains one of the major challenges in developing scalable and reproducible cell therapies. Differences between donors, tissues, and manufacturing runs can translate into significant changes in product performance. This talk will discuss strategies for identifying, monitoring, and controlling variability from cell sourcing and isolation through to downstream manufacturing.
10:10 The Starting Cell Matters: How Source and Isolation Impact Cell Therapy Quality
Not all starting cells are created equal. Their biological origin, donor characteristics, tissue source, and isolation process can have a profound impact on phenotype, viability, differentiation, and therapeutic potency. This presentation will explore how understanding and controlling starting-cell attributes can help create more predictable and consistent cell therapy products.
10:40 From Biological Variability to Manufacturing Control: Standardising Starting Cells
Biological variability cannot always be eliminated, but it can be measured, understood, and managed. This talk will examine how cell sourcing and isolation strategies can be combined with critical quality attribute assessment to establish more consistent starting populations. The focus will be on translating biological variability into measurable manufacturing controls and more robust cell therapy processes.
11:00 Networking Tea Break To Connect With Peers, Exchange Insights, And Explore Shared Interests.
11:30 Moderator Recap Sessions Before Break
11:40 Beyond Cell Viability: Defining the Right Starting Material for Cell Therapy
Viability alone is not enough to define a high-quality starting cell population. Phenotype, functional potency, differentiation state, and other critical attributes can vary substantially even when viability appears acceptable. This session will explore a more comprehensive approach to starting-cell characterisation and how early quality decisions can influence the consistency, scalability, and performance of cell therapy manufacturing.
12:00 Interactive Discussion - The interactive discussion provides a platform for presenters and panellists to exchange perspectives, address critical industry challenges, share real-world experiences, and explore practical strategies to strengthen strategic positioning and drive meaningful outcomes. Discussion topics are:
How can manufacturers reduce donor variability without compromising biological relevance or scalability?
Which starting-cell attributes best predict downstream manufacturing consistency, potency, and product quality?
How should sourcing strategies balance donor diversity, availability, reproducibility, and regulatory expectations?
What isolation methods minimise cellular stress while preserving phenotype, viability, and functionality?
Which characterisation assays provide the most actionable information before manufacturing begins?
How can critical quality attributes translate biological variability into measurable manufacturing controls?
When should manufacturers establish acceptance criteria for phenotype, potency, viability, and differentiation?
How can advanced analytics identify problematic variability before it impacts downstream manufacturing performance?
What role should donor qualification play in building robust, scalable cell therapy processes?
How can standardised starting materials improve process robustness, scalability, comparability, and clinical consistency?
13:05 Lunch Break
CELL EXPANSION & MANUFACTURING SCALE-UP
14:00 Moderator Opening Remarks
14:10 Scaling Living Products: Rethinking Cell Expansion for Manufacturing
Scaling cell therapies is fundamentally different from scaling conventional biologics. This talk will explore the unique challenges of expanding living cells while maintaining growth kinetics, phenotype, viability, and functional potency—and how manufacturing strategies must evolve to address these challenges.
14:25 From Flask to Factory: The Challenges of Scaling Cell Expansion
Moving from small-scale culture to commercial manufacturing introduces changes in process conditions, cell density, oxygen transfer, nutrient availability, shear, and process control. This talk will examine the critical scale-up challenges and practical approaches for translating robust cell expansion processes from laboratory to manufacturing scale.
14:40 Bigger Isn’t Better: Maintaining Cell Quality at Manufacturing Scale
Increasing culture volume does not simply mean increasing everything proportionally. As cell expansion scales, subtle changes in the cellular microenvironment can alter phenotype, viability, and function. This talk will discuss how to design scale-up strategies that preserve critical quality attributes while increasing manufacturing capacity.
15:00 Networking Tea Break To Connect With Peers, Exchange Insights, And Explore Shared Interests.
15:30 Moderator Recap Sessions Before Break
15:40 Scaling Without Compromise: Engineering Robust Cell Expansion Processes
A successful cell expansion process must deliver both quantity and quality. This presentation will focus on process engineering approaches to achieve reproducible cell growth at larger scales, including control of the cellular environment, process parameters, and scale-dependent risks that can impact product performance.
15:50 The Biology of Scale: Why Cell Expansion Behaves Differently at Manufacturing Scale
Cells respond to their environment, and that environment changes significantly as processes become larger. This talk will explore the biological and engineering principles underlying scale-dependent changes in cell growth, phenotype, viability, and function, and how understanding these interactions can enable more predictable manufacturing scale-up.
16:00 From Cell Growth to Cell Manufacturing: Building Scalable Expansion Platforms
The transition from experimental cell culture to a scalable manufacturing platform requires more than increasing reactor size. This talk will examine how to build cell expansion processes that are scalable, reproducible, and capable of consistently delivering cells with the required identity, quality, viability, and function.
16:15: Interactive Discussion - Discussion topics are:
How can manufacturers scale cell expansion while preserving phenotype, potency, and viability?
What scale-dependent changes most strongly disrupt oxygen transfer, nutrients, shear, and growth?
Which process parameters require tighter control as expansion moves toward commercial manufacturing?
How should critical quality attributes guide scale-up decisions from development through production?
Can larger bioreactors deliver consistent cellular environments, or do engineering risks emerge?
Which scale-up strategies best balance cell yield, quality, reproducibility, and manufacturing efficiency?
How can process analytics detect biological changes before quality attributes drift significantly?
What role should computational modeling play in predicting cell behavior during scale-up?
How can expansion platforms remain flexible across cell types and therapeutic modalities?
What manufacturing innovations can make scalable cell expansion predictable and economically sustainable?
17:00 End of day One