As COVID-19 spreads we are focusing on two critical areas:

  • Firstly, ensuring the safety of our passionate, patient-focused, forward thinking colleagues; and
  • Secondly, continuing the work we do to make our therapies available to people with cancer

All of our facilities in the US and UK remain open at the present time, to the extent required to support manufacturing and delivery of our therapies and other critical scientific activities.

Protecting our employees and our communities

  • We are working with our employees to make sure that they follow the guidelines set out by the UK and US governments, as well as regional guidance.
  • We want to ensure that we do everything we can to protect our communities from further spread of the virus.
  • Employees who are not critical to manufacture of cells for patients or certain other critical scientific activities are working from home.
  • All business travel has been suspended.
  • Face-to-face interactions will be limited and, if they must happen, they will take place respecting the social distancing requirements.

Continuing our clinical trials

We are aware of the challenges of conducting clinical trials in the context of the current pandemic, however…

  • We will do everything we can to assist the clinical sites we work with, so that they can continue enrolling patients in our trials, and for patients to be treated at the earliest possible time – an even more important priority given that many are late stage cancer patients.
  • We know that some hospitals and patients may choose to postpone their participation in our trials until a later date, which we absolutely understand and respect. We will work with those sites to treat patients as soon as the situation improves.

Manufacturing and delivering our SPEAR T-cells

  • We have implemented a work-from-home approach for most of our employees, as well as other additional steps, so that we can mitigate the risk of the virus spreading at our three facilities. This means our colleagues doing business critical work, including those in our manufacturing and quality teams, can continue doing so.
  • We have made arrangements to ensure that we have the supplies we need in place to continue this important work.
  • We are also working closely with all our partners involved in the supply chain to ensure that we can manufacture and deliver our therapies safely to patients.

This is a rapidly evolving situation that we are closely monitoring, in order for us to adapt our approaches and guidance to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and partners, as we strive to continue our mission to provide cell therapies to people with cancer.