Cincinnati Children’s Accelerating Breakthroughs in Care for Cancer, Blood Diseases and Genetic Disorders with New Center

Monday, November 17, 2025

Key takeaways:

• Cincinnati Children's has a new, cutting-edge facility to speed the creation of innovative therapies for patients with cancer, blood diseases and genetic disorders
• The Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center integrates research, development and manufacturing
• The center represents Cincinnati Children's commitment to collaboration and global impact in care

Nov. 17, 2025 - Cincinnati Children's today celebrated the opening of a new state-of-art facility for its Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center, which will enable the health system to increase clinical trials of innovative drugs and biological therapeutics for patients with cancer, blood diseases and genetic disorders.

"Our Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center is the launchpad for new cures," said Tina Cheng, MD, director of the Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation, chief medical officer and chair of Pediatrics. "This center takes promising science, makes it real, and helps bring hope to patients and families who need it most."

Cincinnati Children's, which ranks No. 1 in the nation for pediatric cancer care, acquired and renovated a large building in Sharonville, Ohio, to expand the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center. It's four times bigger and has far greater capacity to manufacture gene, cell and immunotherapy therapy products than the facility in Cincinnati's Avondale neighborhood where the center has been based since 2001.

Today's ribbon-cutting ceremony included Cincinnati Children's scientists, engineers and clinicians who collaborate to design and manufacture gene and cell therapy products - often custom-made to correct or replace a patient's faulty genes or to empower their immune cells to fight refractory diseases that don't respond to standard treatments.

Over 300,000 children throughout the world are diagnosed with cancer every year, and an estimated 8 million are born with a birth defect. Thousands of Cincinnati Children's 19,600 employees are engaged in research to find medical treatments or cures for such ailments, and every year families from all 50 states and dozens of countries travel to Cincinnati Children's to receive care for complex or rare disorders.

"Children and families grappling with cancer or genetic disorders often look to Cincinnati Children's for innovative treatments, and the work that will be conducted at the new home for our Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center will improve outcomes for even more kids with the hardest-to-treat illnesses," said Stella Davies, MBBS, PhD, co-executive director of the health system's Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute as well as director of the Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immune Deficiency.

In addition to advancing the work of Cincinnati Children's researchers, the new home of the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center was designed to accelerate therapies by enhancing collaboration with partners such as large pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, universities and other health systems.

"What makes the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center unique is that it's not just a research lab and it's not just a manufacturing facility - it's both," said Chaozhong "Charles" Zou, executive director. "The center is tightly connected to the clinical side of Cincinnati Children's, which means discoveries can move faster from bench to bedside, enabling patients to gain access to new therapies sooner."

The Cincinnati Children's Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center develops vectors and cellular products for diseases such as telomere biology disorders, which result from gene mutations that can lead to premature aging, organ problems and a predisposition to cancers such as leukemia. Other therapies focus on combatting blood disorders such as sickle cell disease, which can cause severe pain and organ damage. Additional research focuses on developing treatments for hereditary protein alveolar proteinosis, a lung disease that can cause shortness of breath, a chronic cough and fatigue.

Gene and cell therapy products are living, highly complex medicines, Zou noted. The production process must meet exacting regulatory standards to ensure that every patient in a clinical trial receives the same therapy, made to the highest possible level of consistency and safety.

To achieve that, the new home of the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center was built with extraordinary attention to detail. The air is filtered to be even cleaner than that of a hospital operating room. The temperature and humidity remain tightly controlled at each individual room level. Every element, including specialized air filters, was designed to prevent even the smallest contamination or variation.

Now, the building at 10995 Canal Road will now undergo a certification process, expected to take one year, to ensure the center meets requirements for the manufacture of gene, cell and immunotherapy products for clinical trials. The onsite manufacture of such therapies should begin by early 2027.

Up to 100 Cincinnati Children's employees will work at the larger Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center, including 24 recruited to fill new positions. About half of the new hires are scientists - including biologists and those focused on quality assurance of medicinal products, which is known as Current Good Manufacturing Practice, or cGMP.

The new facility builds on the success of the center (previously named the Cincinnati Children's Translational Core Laboratory), which has been a leader in the development, testing and manufacturing of such drugs and therapeutics for early phase clinical trials for nearly 25 years.

"What differentiates this new center is a combination of scale, capabilities and the way we operate," Zou said. "This facility is over 50,000 square feet and houses 12 state-of-the-art clean rooms designed to prevent contamination during the production of gene and cell therapies, making it one of the largest academic centers of its kind in the world. But beyond size, what truly sets us apart is that we operate at industry standards, with rigorous processes and quality systems in place, ensuring that the products we develop meet the same expectations as those from leading biopharma companies."

Cincinnati Children's invested $60 million to build the new home of the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center, including design, construction and equipment. The building, previously an auto parts distribution facility, encompasses 111,000 square feet on a 14.6-acre site. About 50,000 square feet of the building houses the Applied Gene and Cell Therapy Center. The rest serves as a supply chain distribution hub for Cincinnati Children's three hospitals and over 40 other locations. More than two dozen additional people will work at the distribution hub.

Danis Construction Building Co. was design-builder for the project. The design team included: BHDP Architecture; Heapy Engineering for mechanical, engineering and plumbing; Schaefer for structural engineering; and bioX for process engineering.