Honeywell’s building technology is helping to power the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s (Peter Mac) $105 million cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility in Melbourne, Australia.
Multinational conglomerate corporation Honeywell’s Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI) platform manages the manufacturing facility.
According to Honeywell, it addresses the following needs:
(1) a new Building Management System (BMS) that controls the facility’s energy and captures data to ensure it remains compliant with stringent healthcare and pharmaceutical requirements
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(2) a new operational technology (OT) security system to protect the critical work being carried out by the facility’s scientists
(3) environmental management and monitoring systems to ensure air temperature and humidity remain at optimal levels
(4) and complete redundancy of mechanical services for each of the facility’s clean rooms.
Honeywell said the deployment was complex because the location was in a live hospital and operating environment where infection control is critical to patient safety.
The environment has also been tested against a list of requirements from the Federal Government’s Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) and Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), safeguarding the health and safety of people and ensuring that high-quality cell-based products can be manufactured in the facility.
“These are bespoke building technologies that are enabling us to deliver cutting-edge treatments for people with cancer. These treatments are changing lives,” says Peter Mac director of the centre of excellence in cellular immunotherapy professor Simon Harrison.
“The large scale, high throughput manufacturing capacity combined with our highly skilled workforce represents a sovereign advanced manufacturing capability that supports cell and gene therapy product development from concept to commercialisation,” says Cell Therapies CEO Dr Bev Menner.
“The facility is a testament to the highly customised capabilities Honeywell’s building automation technologies can deliver to organisations across the life sciences industry that are working to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges,” says Honeywell Building Automation vice president and general manager of services Laura Laltrello.
Co-funded by the Australian Federal Government, Peter Mac, and individual donors, the Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) facility was completed in 2023 and is operated by the contract development and manufacturing organisation Cell Therapies.
It commercially produces CAR T-cells and other “living” cell-based therapies to treat patients with blood cancers.
The new manufacturing capacity enables Cell Therapies to support their IP accelerator platform, translating Australian-led research onshore.
Peter Mac is a cancer research, education, and treatment centre and Australia’s only public health service dedicated to caring for people affected by cancer.
It is located within the $1 billion Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre facility.
Honeywell is the services contractor to the Plenary Health consortium – also comprising Plenary Group as sponsor, investor, and financial arranger, and the Grocon PCL joint venture as builder – contracted by the Victorian Government to finance, design, build, and maintain the centre for 25 years under a public-private partnership.
Cell Therapies is an Australian-based, globally active contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), specialising in cell therapy, gene therapy, regenerative medicine, and cellular immunotherapy products.