Kytopen, T-CURX, and Fraunhofer IZI establish cell therapy center of excellence for non-viral manufacturing

Edited by Robert McTiernan··2 min read

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Kytopen Corp., Würzburg-based T-CURX GmbH, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) in Würzburg and Leipzig, Germany, announced the establishment of a cell therapy center of excellence on April 29, 2026, structured to develop scalable, non-viral manufacturing workflows for engineered cell therapies. The three-party collaboration pools complementary platform technologies and process development capabilities, with no specific drug candidate or financial terms disclosed.

The arrangement brings together Kytopen’s Flowfect continuous-flow cellular engineering platform, T-CURX’s proprietary transposon-based gene transfer technology, and Fraunhofer IZI’s translational research and good manufacturing practice (GMP) scale-up infrastructure. The stated objective is to build an integrated discovery-to-manufacturing ecosystem that reduces bottlenecks associated with cell therapy scale-up and accelerates the delivery of engineered cell therapies into clinical development.

Each party contributes a distinct capability set to the Fraunhofer IZI partnership. Kytopen will install its Flowfect Tx platform on-site at Fraunhofer IZI to support the manufacturing of cell-based therapeutics within closed GMP workflows. Fraunhofer IZI will also gain access to Kytopen’s Flowfect Discover 96-well optimization platform, which is designed to support rapid progression from proof-of-concept testing through process development and into clinical and commercial manufacturing scale. Kytopen’s continuous-flow transfection approach is intended to support a broad range of cell therapy modalities while maintaining cell health and yield at scale.

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T-CURX, which describes itself as a clinical-stage company developing personalized immunotherapy, contributes its proprietary transposon-based gene transfer system. The company’s non-viral gene transfer approach is central to the collaboration’s manufacturing strategy, providing the genomic engineering component that will be integrated with Kytopen’s transfection hardware and Fraunhofer IZI’s process development and scale-up capabilities. T-CURX is reported to maintain a pipeline of four CAR-T programs, though none of those programs are individually identified in the collaboration disclosure as specific assets in scope.

Fraunhofer IZI, through the head of its Cellular Immunotherapy Branch, Prof. Dr. Michael Hudecek, framed the collaboration as a means of simplifying and standardizing the infrastructure required for advanced cell therapy development through automation and streamlined logistics.

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