What are CAR-T Cells?

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell (CAR-T) therapy uses a patient’s white blood cells to fight cancer. When a person has cancer, their doctors take T Cells from the patient and genetically modify them so they have a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). These modified T cells are then infused back into the patient and can recognize and kill cancerous cells.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is a process that takes place in a GMP facility, which will typically operate several clean rooms to maintain sterility. Each cell therapy batch needs to follow a manufacturing protocol. Production is tracked using barcodes and sample tracking software; samples are tagged with patient identification and time points of collection, ensuring they remain traceable at all times. This ensures the product meets quality standards and there is no risk of contamination or the samples being tainted.

Distribution

Distribution operations management is an integral part of making sure you are providing the right cell therapy products to the right patients, in a safe and efficient manner, at the right time. Distribution Pipelines need to be compliant with current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) guidelines and requirements. Common processes for distribution include:

• Order Management
• Inventory Management
• Warehouse Management
• Routing
• Shipment Tracking
• E-Signatures

Patient Care

Patient care is your main priority. You need to know where each patient’s CAR-T cells are throughout their journey: in the process of being manufactured, shipped, delivered, and infused into the patient. Salesforce Health Cloud enables you to track CAR-T cells in a single place and ensures that they are monitored closely from apheresis to infusion.

Track patients and these therapies through a single platform.

Therapies like CAR-T are bringing hope to patients suffering from blood cancers. In the case of these patient-specific treatments, your supply chain is a patient. That’s why it’s so important that you understand the whole process — from raw materials to manufacturing to distribution.

Your end-to-end platform should give you single-patient visibility and real-time analytics for every step of the process, so that you can quickly identify and resolve any potential issues before they become problems.

You can only fulfil patient demand for cutting-edge therapies if your platform scales with your business and manages the massive amounts of data generated by cell therapy manufacturing. With Salesforce, we can make sure the right data is available for your coordinators at the right time.

Your patients’ needs and wants must be at the center of your cell therapy supply chain solutions because they’re at the center of everything you do. Salesforce Health Cloud consolidates all that patient data — including clinical records, billing history, claims and more — in one place, enabling coordinators to create personalized care plans based on individual circumstances.

Interested in how Salesforce can be used in your vein-to-vein supply chain? Reach out today to our resident experts.

About the Author

Jan Aertgeerts is a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA) and Managing Director at Harrier. Jan is passionate about building secure, high-performance technical solutions.