Center for Cellular Engineering

New CC Facility Opens for Business

BY THE NIH CATALYST STAFF

Some establishments offer terrace dining. At the NIH, we have terrace cellular engineering.

Nestled on the East Terrace of the Clinical Center (CC), above the P3 parking garage, is the new Center for Cellular Engineering (CCE) cell processing facility, a modular building known as “T10B” with four manufacturing clean rooms comprising 3,000 square feet and another 1,000 square feet of support space.

Led by the CC under the direction of David Stroncek, the T10B facility is now fully open to manufacturing cell and gene therapies and hematopoietic stem cells for NIH intramural research program investigators.

The T10B facility complements existing capacity in Building 10, namely the “3T” facility on the T-wing of the third floor, with its four culture rooms, and the “2J” facility on the J-wing of the second floor, with its eight culture rooms.

Soon to come will be “12E,” a sparkling new space on the 12th floor of the renovated E-wing, which will have seven culture rooms, two cell processing rooms, and assay lab and office space. When the 12E facility opens, the 3T facility—established in 1997 and showing its age—will close.

So that’s 12E, 2J, 3T, and T10B, not to be confused with…T30. T30 is the NCI-operated Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Cell Processing Modular Facility, which manufactures cancer immunotherapies primarily for the NCI Surgery Branch.

The punchline here is that the CC is now meeting the incredible demand for cellular therapy services for IRP investigators and their patients, the realization of a bold business plan put forward in 2017.

For further reading, check out these articles in Clinical Center News: Center for Cellular Engineering Unveils New Manufacturing Facility, and another written by our former editor, Laura Stephenson Carter: Center for Cellular Engineering; New Name and New Location.