Porto, June 6, 2025 (Lusa) - A Portuguese consortium, bringing together clinicians, researchers, and academics, aims to develop national capacity to produce innovative therapies using CAR-T cells, an advanced form of immunotherapy that has shown success rates in certain blood cancers, it was announced on Friday The consortium is led by a biotechnology company from Guimarães, Stemmatters, the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) in Porto and the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon (FCT NOVA).
Under the name "CAR T-Matters - Transforming the landscape of CAR-T cell therapy in Portugal", the project has been selected for competitive funding by the COMPETE 2030 programme, managed by the National Innovation Agency (ANI).
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the president of the IPO in Porto said that the main objective is to promote the country's capacity to produce CAR-T cells, i.e. advanced medical therapies, in Portugal.
"It is a very complex process involving several initiatives and stages that will take a few years. The project is expected to be completed in 2028 (...).
We aim to establish the conditions for producing these cells, which will enable Portugal to offer more patients access to this innovative technology. This will also attract more academic and industrial clinical trials, democratising access and reducing the cost of this therapy, which has brought so many benefits to cancer patients," said Júlio Oliveira.
CAR-T cell therapies consist of reprogramming T lymphocytes (cells from the patient's own immune system) to recognise and specifically attack tumour cells.
Information sent to Lusa by consortium officials indicates that "this advanced form of immunotherapy has shown unprecedented success rates in certain blood cancers," but that "access to these therapies in Portugal faces major logistical and economic obstacles, as the country cannot yet develop or manufacture them."
Currently, Portuguese patients who are candidates for CAR-T therapies are dependent on production centres abroad.
The patient's T cells are collected at a hospital in Portugal and sent to specialised laboratories outside the country, where they are genetically modified and multiplied. The resulting therapy is then sent back to be administered to the patient.
Júlio Oliveira told Lusa that he believes that the training and education of professionals from various teams, from clinics to academics, should take "a year, a year and a half," and that "it is expected that CAR-Ts will be produced in two years."
"The issue is scale. It will be small-scale and essentially focused on projects (...). Will this production replace commercial CAR-Ts? No. Because, just to give you an idea of the demand, of what the production needs is, in the last year, we did as many CAR-T infusions at the IPO in Porto as we had done since 2019," pointed out Júlio Oliveira.
As for the participation of other entities, according to FCT NOVA professor and researcher Paula Videira, it will be up to this educational institution to "explore thousands of molecules using machine learning algorithms to discover the most promising ones to enhance the anti-tumour capacity of CAR-T cells."
"This allows us to model innovative therapeutic targets that escape traditional approaches," explains the professor.
At the same time, on the industrial front, Stemmatters will be responsible for implementing the manufacturing capacity for these cell therapies under regulatory requirements, "establishing an integrated chain for the development and clinical translation of cell immunotherapies, capable of supporting therapeutic innovation in Portugal," as summarised by the company's co-founder and coordinator of CAR T-Matters, Rui Sousa.
The CAR T-Matters project commenced in February 2025 and will span three years.
This operation is co-financed by the COMPETE 2030 Programme (Portugal 2030), through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
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