Scaling Biopharma Operations: Piper’s Impact on CAR-T Manufacturing and Growth

Client

A global biopharmaceutical organization that acquired a company producing CAR-T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy. The products developed by the acquired company can reprogram T cells to help patient’s immune systems combat cancer.

Challenge

To support a new facility-build for its CAR-T cell immunotherapy program, the company needed to transfer technology from other locations and certify equipment to transition two new products from clinical manufacturing to commercialization. With CAR-T being an emerging therapy—only one other product had gained FDA approval—speed was critical.

Bringing this novel, life-saving treatment to market quickly meant the potential to extend and even cure the lives of patients with blood cancers. Every delay impacted the ability to scale and help more people.

It was critical to move quickly without jeopardizing the integrity of the products. To achieve this mission, the company urgently needed strong consultant resources with the right expertise. With competitors racing to develop similar therapies, finding a partner who was deeply networked within the biopharmaceutical industry was vital to ensure success.

Solution

The client needed a trusted partner with deep industry knowledge and a strong local network—and they found that in Piper. Leveraging the Piper Engagement Process, the Piper Life Sciences’ team collaborated with key client stakeholders to ensure alignment with hiring targets.

To fully understand the client’s resource needs, Piper conducted in-depth research on CAR-T therapy and consulted the key stakeholders. This included analyzing early clinical trial successes and scaling challenges as they transitioned to late-phase development.

With each batch of blood reacting differently in production, there was no standard guide for handling deviations. This made it essential to identify and onboard consultants who could think critically, adapt quickly, and problem-solve in real time. As the client put it, they needed individuals who were “comfortable building the plane while flying it”. Recognizing that both technical expertise and strong communication skills were critical, Piper searched for both soft and technical skills to identify those who could collaborate effectively at all levels of the organization.

To ensure seamless support, Piper’s Life Sciences Delivery Team provided onsite functionality and coverage to rapidly engaged prospective resources to qualify and promptly present resource profiles. Leveraging our expansive internal and external networks—including teams across multiple offices, contractor staff, and extensive pool of experts across the pharmaceutical industry —we efficiently qualified and presented resources with precision to the client. By streamlining the interview process the Piper team was able to facilitate rapid feedback and ensure a unified qualification and onboarding experience increased the likelihood of retaining newly onboarded consultants.

Results

Through implementing the Piper Engagement Process, Piper successfully delivered long-term consulting resources and key personnel across multiple skill sets, immediately delivering 54 resources in the initial wave. Among the 54 Piper resources, 9 resources were offered full time employment offers at the client after the assignment ended.

The strategic partnership ensured the client retained key personnel throughout the critical phases of the project, enabling the client to meet its pivotal project milestones. A key driver in the success was how Piper collaborated with the client to successfully deliver on the CAR-T resource deployment initiative.

Throughout the engagement, Piper reduced the number of hours the client management team needed to dedicate toward contractor vetting and onboarding by talking to technical leads and participating in the processes on the front end. Following the initial placement, Piper continued to support the client’s CAR-T program—more than doubling the number of consultants within four years.