GEN Magazine
It’s time to grease the wheels of industry—so declares anyone who wants cell and gene therapies produced in greater volume. To date, these therapies have been artisanal products, much to the frustration of developers, manufacturers, clinicians, and (most of all) patients. Fortunately, cell and gene therapy assembly lines are being assembled thanks to innovations in low-volume analytics, vector optimization, bioreactor control, and workflow automation. All of these developments are discussed in the May issue of GEN, which also considers how the image of fast-turning wheels is especially apt for synbio-powered biomanufacturing. There, the whole idea is to set up iterative design–build–test–learn cycles. To keep these wheels spinning, synbio startups are using AI-powered software to drive automated laboratory evolution. Finally, the May issue of GEN reports on the pharma industry’s RSV vaccines, the antibody industry’s bispecific constructs, gene editing’s clinical progress, and mass spec’s proteomics-friendly turn.