Century Therapeutics (IPSC) Leerink Global Healthcare Conference 2026 summary

Strategic transformation and pipeline focus

• Shifted iPSC platform to target beta islet cells for type 1 diabetes, prioritizing less competitive, high unmet need areas with strong clinical proof of concept.

• Pipeline narrowed from 11-12 preclinical programs to four core programs in March 2025, emphasizing commercial opportunity and leveraging unique internal expertise.

• Chose type 1 diabetes due to large patient population, significant unmet need, and established clinical precedent from cadaveric islet transplants.

• Rapid progress since March 2025, advancing a drug candidate into enabling studies.

Product profile and clinical challenges

• Key barriers identified: achieving productive, durable islet cell therapy, scalable manufacturing, and minimizing immunosuppression.

• Clinical transformation goals: eliminate exogenous insulin, reduce or remove chronic immunosuppression, and ensure scalable supply.

• Preclinical data shows promising cell function; main challenges are immunosuppression and manufacturing scale.

Manufacturing and differentiation innovation

• Beta islet cell manufacturing differs from NK/T cells due to lack of proliferation at the end stage, requiring scale-up at the iPSC stage.

• Emphasis on process control, analytics, and stepwise innovation to address scale-up challenges, including 3D suspension culture and genomic stability.

• Utilizes a 3D bioreactor-enabled process and multiple GMP-enabled iPSC lines for rapid engineering and differentiation.