St. Paul, MN (October 14, 2024) – Today the Wilson Foundation announced a $2M donation to Caring Cross in support of its program of making CAR-T cell therapies affordable and accessible in underserved communities throughout the world.
Caring Cross is a charitable organization founded to enable hospitals and health systems to manufacture advanced medicines locally and deliver them in a cost-effective manner. Using this approach, marginalized and impoverished communities throughout the world will have expanded access to advanced medicines like CAR-T cell therapy. One specific objective of Caring Cross is to make CAR-T therapies available to cancer patients in an affordable and accessible manner. CAR-T therapy is demonstrating life-saving potential for many people afflicted with certain types of cancer.
“Manufacturing CAR T drug products without pumping media and in combination with a simple, and unique approach to isolating T cells from blood, has lowered the material cost for making CAR-T cell therapies to $20,000 per product” said Dr. Boro Dropulić, the Executive Director of Caring Cross and a gene therapy veteran. “Using whole blood to initiate the CAR-T process also saves cancer patients from having to travel to sophisticated hospitals for apheresis. This improves CAR-T therapy access to underserved or marginalized populations that may not live near in geographic areas with access to apheresis centers.”
“One aim of the Wilson Foundation is to improve quality of life for people in poorer communities. The mission of Caring Cross aligns with that aim and I’ve been very impressed by the speed and competence of Caring Cross as they strive to make CAR-T cell therapy more accessible to cancer patients in need,” said John Wilson, founder of the Wilson Foundation and founder and CEO of CellReady and Wilson Wolf.
Caring Cross intends to use the charitable donation to advance its technology and manufacturing platforms to improve access of CAR-T cell therapy worldwide.
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About Caring Cross
Caring Cross is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the development of advanced medicines and ensuring access to cures for all patients, everywhere. To enable its mission, Caring Cross is developing technologies and therapeutic candidates to improve the accessibility, affordability, and applicability of advanced medicines like CAR-T therapy and stem cell gene therapy. Caring Cross founded Vector BioMed, a for- profit vector contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), specializing in rapid lentiviral vector manufacturing solutions, to provide the industry a source of affordable high-quality GMP Lentiviral vectors. For more information on Caring Cross visit https://caringcross.org. For more information on Vector BioMed visit https://vectorbiomed.com.
About the Wilson Foundation
The Wilson Foundation is a charitable entity with approximately $200 million in assets that seeks to improve quality of life by various initiatives through engagement with targeted communities and likeminded foundations.
The donation to Caring Cross will be made through a donor advised fund funded by a grant from the Wilson Foundation and over which John Wilson retains advisory privileges.
Learn more about the Wilson Foundation at www.wilsonfoundationmn.org
