Last year, the FDA approved the first CAR T-cell treatments, which are a new class of promising therapies that train the body’s immune cells to seek and destroy cancers in the blood. But to work, cells have to be extracted from a patient and shipped to a pharma lab to be modified before being shipped back to the hospital for an infusion through an IV. The cells have to be kept cold enough to suspend all metabolic processes — this means -240 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Wired, every one of those treatments makes its cross-country journey inside liquid nitrogen-cool containers marked “Cryoport,” which is the name of the leader in a cottage medical industry—one devoted to delivering next-generation medicines on time and intact. Cryport, a California-based company, started out in the reproductive and veterinary sciences space nearly 30 years ago, when they started shipping bull sperm and human eggs and chicken vaccines around the world. But now, they service more than 200 ongoing clinical trials and are the single largest cold chain provider for immunotherapy drugmakers, exclusively transporting the two newly-approved treatments.
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