Q&A: Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Cellerator CEO Thomas Carlsen digs into $135.4M Danish cell therapy facility

The Novo Nordisk Foundation revealed Thursday it has committed €127 million ($135.4 million) to build a new cell therapy facility in Denmark, which is set to be completed by 2027.

The facility, Cellerator, will be located at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby, and will facilitate collaboration between public and private companies — including academia, biotech and pharma companies.

The site will focus on the final development and upscaling of cell therapies for diseases such as chronic heart failure, Parkinson’s disease, type 1 diabetes and cancer. It will support therapies derived from embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells.

Thomas Carlsen

Endpoints News briefly spoke with Cellerator CEO Thomas Carlsen, who talked about the challenges in cell therapy manufacturing and the reasons behind the facility build.

He underscored that Cellerator will be commencing educational and training programs next year, ahead of the facility’s opening. “To ensure that we have a talent pipeline that can meet the demands currently, those are some major workforce gaps within cell therapy,” he added.

This Zoom interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Anna Brown: Why are you investing in such a gene therapy facility now?

Thomas Carlsen: When we’re looking into our market analysis, we see a strong market growth within cell therapy. In 2026, there’ll be more than 1,100 cell therapy candidates and, in 2036, there’ll be more than 3,000 candidates. In fact, 75% of those are anticipated to be in Phase I or II clinical trials or earlier.

That is a very nice fit for the focus area of Cellerator and, from a strategic point of view for the Foundation, it’s also a nice fit. We want to support the cell therapy global ecosystem.

We’re going to collaborate with academic groups, biotech companies, startup companies, clinicians from hospitals and also pharma companies. That’s very important to highlight from a facility flexibility point of view, but also from a quality point of view.

We want to be the one to support the cell therapy ecosystem development, and our hope is to attract national cell therapy developers and also international developers.

Brown: Companies such as Lonza have reported a decline in demand for cell therapy manufacturing, how might this affect the Foundation?

Carlsen: We’re not looking at this from a revenue point of view. Cellerator will be a spinout company from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and all profits will be reinvested in the company, either as technology development or as a tool to ensure that as many customers as possible get access to the facility and the services in the facility.

Brown: As for the workforce gap in cell therapy, can you tell me why you think that is?

Carlsen: There’s been major investments in the cell therapy field which require a large workforce, and I don’t think educational institutions have been fully aware of this market need. Cell therapy has really accelerated within the past few years, so I think that’s really resulted in a workforce gap.

So, it needs to be both from an educational point of view but also from an on-the-job training point of view. And I think that is happening, and we need to participate and support that in the best way possible.

Brown: What is the cell therapy space like in Denmark?

Carlsen: We hope that with Cellerator we will expand the cell therapy ecosystem, and improve access to cell therapy. Currently, Denmark is among one of the leaders within cell therapy development.

manufacturing
cell therapy
gene therapy
stem cells
biotech
pharma