When most people think of cancer care, they rarely associate it with what goes on behind the scenes to create life-saving treatments.
For starters, developing cell and gene therapies is pricey, and maintaining the manufacturing technology and environment is equally challenging. Consider that numerous air exchanges are required each hour to filter out particles and impurities from a cell manufacturing facility. At the same time, the cell therapies that are scrupulously manufactured must be kept at specific, highly controlled temperatures in cold room storage or liquid nitrogen.
Supervising the minutiae of the machinery that fuels the Therapeutic Products Program (TPP) at Fred Hutch Cancer Center falls to Folashade “Shade” Otegbeye, MBChB, MPH, an associate professor at both Fred Hutch in the Translational Science and Therapeutics Division and at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “I consider myself a manufacturing scientist,” said Otegbeye. “I oversee the manufacturing component of translational science.”
