The rise of cell and gene therapy (CGT) is revolutionising how we treat complex diseases, offering life-changing treatments for patients in need. However, with these innovations come significant logistical challenges.
Ensuring these highly specialised therapies reach patients on time, without damage, is crucial. As the CGT market expands, logistics must keep pace to protect the integrity of these groundbreaking treatments.
High-Stakes Medicine Meets Outdated Logistics
The CGT industry is growing rapidly, but the logistics supporting it have struggled to keep pace. CGT treatments are personalised, highly sensitive, and time-critical, making their durability and availability incredibly limited. Simply put, these treatments are some of the most expensive and delicate shipments moving around the world right now – and that means the standard supply chain playbook no longer applies.
Reaching upwards of $4 million per dose, CGT offers life-altering potential at an incredibly high cost. Once manufactured, these therapies must be administered to patients within hours, and they often require ultra-low temperatures during transport. Should any of these treatments be lost, damaged, or delayed in transit, the manufacturing process would have to start over. For patients waiting to receive these therapies, that’s time that they may not survive.
It’s no wonder the logistics behind this process are daunting. Not only do logistics teams face the possibility of losing millions of dollars in product, but they are responsible for delivering potentially life-saving treatments. The specific needs of these fragile therapies create a new set of issues that many companies don’t fully understand, and therefore, aren’t ready to support.
The CGT Cold Chain Challenge
One of the key issues in CGT shipping is outdated cold chain infrastructure. Traditional shipment tracking methods, such as barcode scanning, provide only a snapshot of the shipment’s location, leaving teams in the dark about the cargo’s real-time condition. Considering how incredibly time-sensitive CGT shipments are, this lack of visibility can be catastrophic.
