TrakCel & Quick Partner to Provide Industry-Leading Digital Supply Chain IT Solution for Cell & Gene Therapies

TrakCel and The Quick Life Science Group recently announced a partnership to offer an integrated IT logistics orchestration platform.

The platform enables the global cell and gene therapy industry to track products and manage the logistical processes of each needle-to-needle supply chain through a single interface. As TrakCel is the leading developer of cell and gene therapy supply chain IT solutions, and Quick, the premier global priority logistics company, and selected preferred transportation partner for the first FDA approved cancer immunotherapy, this partnership will have a considerable impact across the entire supply chain industry.

The integrated platform streamlines the supply chain and enhances the user experience by combining the core strengths of both organizations into a single intuitive interface. The platform enables automatic scheduling of activities across multiple supply chain partners, product-specific workflows to ensure consistent handling and execution of tasks, and validated chain-of-identity tracking to guarantee correct drug product delivery and infusion. Clinics and manufacturing sites across North America and Europe will greatly benefit from the improved efficiency and security offered by this initiative.

CAR-T therapies have just completed their first full year on the market, and personalized medicine is now becoming therapeutically established. There are a considerable number of maturing advanced therapy products nearing approval. According to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, there are 892 companies and 1003 industry-sponsored clinical trials underway worldwide utilizing regenerative medicine and advanced therapy technologies. These clinical and commercial efforts are strengthened by software technologies coupled with digital integrations that tightly orchestrate the highly-complex advanced therapy supply chains. Furthermore, 2018 marked the inflection point in which early-stage advanced therapy companies began investment in adoption of digital supply chain solutions even before enrollment of the first patient..

The volume and growth of clinical and commercial products is increasing the workload for all stakeholders across the supply chain including clinical sites, apheresis collection centers, manufacturing facilities, and couriers. In addition, individual cell and gene therapy supply chains face unique complexities such as precise scheduling requirements and the need to transport temperature and time-sensitive materials globally. A combination of these factors increases the necessity for control and visibility of the timing of sample collection through to product infusion.

“The collaboration between TrakCel and Quick was a critical factor in our vendor selection process,” said Knut Niss, PhD, Chief Technology Officer, Mustang Bio. “For autologous supply chains to function seamlessly, logistics vendors need to work together with the aim of creating a single intuitive interface that automates the supply chain – this is exactly what TrakCel and Quick have achieved. Without such integration, supply chain stakeholders are burdened by manually creating and managing orders in disparate systems, increasing the likelihood of error. The fact that this important integration is already in place allows Mustang to rapidly deploy a powerful customized solution.”

“As one of the world’s largest providers of medical logistics services, Quick Specialized Healthcare Logistics transports every year over 80,000 human organs and tissue samples. It is now essential not only to track the transport of these products that patient’s lives depend on but to offer every person involved in the supply of these products real-time information of the status and location of these products,” said David Murphy, Executive Vice President, Quick Specialized Healthcare Logistics. “Based on the continuously growing number of therapeutic companies currently working with TrakCel and Quick, we see this partnership and the work completed as a critical step forward for the industry. It will enable companies to concentrate on developing therapies, rather than worrying about logistics.”

“We continue to see the number of sensitive, high-value materials moving through the supply chain increasing at an unprecedented rate. If not managed, the risk to patients and organizations involved in the development, manufacture, and delivery of these potentially life-changing therapies will continue to increase,” said Ravi Nalliah, CEO of TrakCel. “The partnership between TrakCel and Quick will enable a significant reduction of these risks. TrakCel will continue to make sure that its partnership with Quick, offers the highest possible protection to patients awaiting much-needed therapies.”

TrakCel is the market leading designer, developer, and deliverer of integrated technologies specifically created in 2012 to manage the international autologous and allogeneic cell, gene and immunotherapy supply chain. TrakCel’s software platform has been developed in collaboration with, and increasingly adopted by leading companies in the cell, gene, and immunotherapy industries. TrakCel’s solutions deliver real-time control over the entire therapeutic supply chain, from sample collection through manufacturing to treatment delivery. The TrakCel platform accelerates global scale-up and scale-out of cell and gene therapy products, increasing efficiency and decreasing complexity while maintaining needle-to-needle compliance and traceability.

TrakCel is headquartered in Cardiff, Wales, UK, with US offices in California and New Jersey. It aims to employ over 100 people by the end of 2019, following a number of senior appointments in 2016 and 2017.

Since 1981, The Quick Group has been serving the life science and healthcare community worldwide, providing 24/7 priority logistics and transportation solutions for time and temperature-sensitive, mission-critical and lifesaving needs.

Quick is the trusted logistics leader for the healthcare industry, safely transporting human organs and tissue for transplant or research, personalized medicine, as well as blood, blood products, cord blood, bone marrow, and medical devices/equipment.

QuickSTAT specializes in managing global clinical trial logistics for all phases of research and drug development, safely transporting clinical research specimens, investigational drugs, clinical trial supplies, and personalized medicine worldwide.