Automated cell therapy manufacturing system wins Good Design Award

Melbourne-based biotech company Celleo has been named a winner in the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards for its Larkem V40 vial filling system for cell therapy.

Cell therapies, such as the CAR-T treatments used against leukaemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma, have produced lasting remissions in some patients whose cancer had come back after other treatments, but they are also among the most difficult medicines in the world to make. Most are autologous: built from a patient’s own cells, modified, grown and tested over several weeks, then returned to that one patient. Every dose is therefore a manufacturing run of its own, and manufacturing capacity is now one of the main limits on how many people are treated.

Every batch needs vials: the samples that release it for use, retained samples, cell banks and intermediates, and the product itself where it is supplied in vials. Today, those are drawn up by hand and pipetted one at a time, inside the most stringent class of cleanroom. It is slow, varies from vial to vial, and ties up skilled staff and the scarcest space in the facility at the moment the batch is worth the most.

The Larkem V40 does that job automatically, inside a sealed, single-use kit. Up to 40 vials are filled at once, in minutes, to a precise, consistent volume, without ever being opened to the air. Because the cells never leave the sealed kit, the system can run in a lower-grade cleanroom, which most facilities already have, instead of the specialised, heavily controlled suites that are costly to build and in short supply.

For a manufacturer, that means a faster and more consistent step and less reliance on the most expensive room in the building. For patients, the aim is more doses from the facilities that already exist.

The Good Design Awards Jury said: “The Jury recognises Celleo’s Larkem V40 as an innovative solution addressing a critical unmet need in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. The platform’s fully closed, automated vial-filling system represents a significant technical achievement, replacing manual, contamination-prone processes with precise, scalable automation that eliminates reliance on high-grade cleanrooms.”

“Larkem exists because the people making these therapies told us vial filling was the step they could not scale,” said David Kneen, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Celleo. “This award recognises a team that took a hard manufacturing problem and designed a better way through it, and the customers and partners who put the system through its paces in their own facilities. It comes as Larkem systems are being installed with cell therapy manufacturers worldwide.”

Celleo built the V40 after more than 100 interviews with the scientists and operators who make cell therapies. The design brief was to close the process, automate it, and make it simple enough that an operator trusts it on the first day.

Image: Supplied