Beyond Manufacturing: Why Portal Fatigue and Physician Adoption Are Blocking Cell Therapy Access

Is manufacturing complexity really the main bottleneck holding back cell and gene therapies, or are we ignoring the operational friction occurring right at the physician's desk?

In this episode of Out of the Lab, host Nicholas Crudele sits down with Carl Schoellhammer, Partner at DeciBio, to discuss why the cell therapy industry must shift its focus from cleanroom COGS to physician awareness, simplified prescribing workflows, and clinical adoption.

Carl shares his perspective on the barriers stalling patient access, comparing centralized US logistics with Europe’s decentralized hospital exemption framework and explaining why the key to scaling cell therapies lies in streamlining the entire prescribing journey.

Key Takeaways:

• The Manufacturing Fallacy: Why COGS and production complexity are no longer the primary bottlenecks limiting cell therapy scale.

• Portal Fatigue: How fragmented drug scheduling systems force doctors to hunt for passwords on Post-it notes just to write a script.

• The European Exemption Model: How centers like Hospital Clínic de Barcelona are leveraging hospital exemption acts to dose over 500 patients in-house.

• Solving Logistics: Easing the administrative and travel burdens on non-metropolitan patients.

• Predictive Operations: How automated analytics and process monitoring can drastically lower batch failure rates.