Limula’s mission is to unlock new treatment modalities at a global scale. By automating the manufacturing of personalised cell therapies, the company addresses a critical bottleneck in the field: the high cost, incredible complexity, and lack of scalability of current manual production processes.

The first CAR T-cell therapy, the blood cancer drug Kymriah by Novartis, made headlines and brought hope for millions of patients when it was approved by the FDA in 2017. To produce a dose, T cells are collected from the patient’s own blood, boosted genetically in the lab so that they are better at fighting tumor cells, multiplied to generate hundreds of millions of cells before being infused back into the patient.

Since then, the cell therapy market has experienced rapid growth, from $150 million to $2.5 billion between 2018 and 2024. Several thousand cell therapies are in pharma companies’ global oncology pipelines and dozens are nearing approval. According to estimates, by 2030, they could be administered to 2 million patients annually. However, labor-intensive production necessitates highly skilled staff and specialized infrastructure. Therefore, CGT therapies are expensive, priced in the hundreds of thousands per dose, and produced in small quantities. As a result, many eligible patients cannot access these life-saving treatments.

Limula has developed a benchtop device, LimONE, that combines the functionalities of a bioreactor and a centrifuge into a single, closed vessel. In a world first, this technology enables fully automated ‘all-in-one’ manufacturing of cell therapies, handling a wide range of volumes and cell types. Its Swiss-made device has been validated in real-world settings in top research institutions such as the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan. Its director, Luigi Naldini, is considered “the father of the lentivirus gene therapy”. The fully developed version of LimONE will be commercialized in an early access program for clients in 2026.

Before founding Limula, you gained over a decade of experience as a scientist. What made you choose science as a career?

I grew up near Lausanne and always liked spending time in nature. I first wanted to become a biologist and ornithologist, but my friends were struggling to find a job. This is why I decided Chemistry was a practical choice, with very exciting applications in biology. My fascination with nature persists. I have less time for it today, but I still occasionally enjoy taking out my binoculars and go birdwatching.

You were the scientific advisor to the President of EPFL [read our interview]. What did that position entail?

The original connection was made around the biohacking community Hackuarium, which I co-founded in 2014 as an attempt to provide anyone a chance to explore the convergence between technology and the life sciences outside of the academic context. A friend introduced me to Martin Vetterli and I discovered an incredibly open person. When we met, we realized our common interest in exploring new ways of disseminating scientific knowledge and fostering a more fluid exchange of ideas and cross-fertilization between different fields of research. At the time, scientific results were still mostly published in print or in static PDF formats. We both wanted researchers to better leverage new dissemination tools, such as web-based publications. There was a shift in academia towards more openness and collaboration. It was a struggle then, with a few notable exceptions like particle physics and bioinformatics. It is no surprise that AI was so successfully applied to protein structures with AlphaFold.

How so?

Determining the structure of molecules and proteins with X-ray crystallography started as a discipline of physics. Physicists are trained to produce and curate well-structured data they often share openly. This is a prerequisite for training AI. So it was not a coincidence that DeepMind started in one of the only fields of biology where troves of well-curated open data was available. It was just a bit frustrating to see AlphaFold receiving a Nobel Prize without any recognition of the decades of work by thousands of scientists who made it possible because of their community-oriented culture. In genetics, every company with data sits on it without sharing it. This is why the UK Biobank is such a fascinating policy initiative.

How did you meet your co-founders, Thomas Eaton and Yann Pierson?

Tom and I met in Oxford at the beginning of my Ph.D. there. He was about to move to Switzerland to do his Ph.D. in Basel. We switched countries, and stayed in touch over the years, but I only realized he was interested in startups when we met again at Hello Tomorrow in Paris. We looked at different ideas together, often to support a scientist looking at launching a company to commercialise a research project. In parallel, Yann and I had already worked together for three years to build the biohacker community in Lausanne. When he introduced us to his invention, which was the base for Limula, we instantly fell in love with the project. The three of us perfectly complement each other. Yann is the maker who likes to tinker in his workshop and wanted to build a product. Tom is good with spreadsheets and contracts. I am outgoing and good at stakeholder management. We never had to discuss who does what; it comes naturally.

Let’s talk about Limula. First, we need to understand what cell and gene therapy, or short, CGT, is. How would you explain this term to a layperson?

CGT is a transformational, life-saving form of medicine that can be broadly divided into two categories. Gene therapies can treat patients born with a genetic defect by correcting the DNA with a single injection. The list of genetic diseases is long, and so there are many opportunities to impact the lives of people with otherwise incurable conditions. Cell therapy is a form of regenerative medicine that uses cells with a curative effect to address cancer and other hard-to-treat conditions. With CGT, medicine can eliminate the root cause of diseases for the first time in history rather than just keeping them in check. With Limula, we automate the manufacturing of cell therapies. This is important because several issues must be solved for cell therapies to deliver on their promise and become universally accessible.

Which are?

First, cell therapies are highly personalized and must be manufactured individually for every patient. This is profoundly different from producing a million pills and shipping them globally. The supply chain for cell therapies is new for pharmaceutical companies and involves many stakeholders in the healthcare system.

Second, manufacturing is complex. Living cells are delicate and must be handled differently from small molecules or biologics, at a completely different scale.

Third, reimbursement is a new challenge for payors. CGTs are costly one-off treatments, whereas traditional medicines are cheaper but have a recurring yearly cost. The incentives for health insurance companies to pay for CGT are not yet fully established.

With Limula, you address the first challenge: manufacturing cell therapies. What does your machine, LimONE, do differently?

Today, cell therapies are produced by specialized operators performing hundreds of manual operations across several steps and pieces of equipment. Limula significantly lowers the complexity by automating cell therapy manufacturing in a single instrument. It removes the need for operators to handle the cells. At the heart of our invention is a new design that allows us to combine the functions of a bioreactor and a centrifuge into one for the first time.

You unveiled the LimONE prototype in March 2025. When will you launch the commercial version?

We built several generations of devices to de-risk every aspect of our technology individually. With the current prototype, we can run the fully automated production in a sequence. The data we collected is extraordinary, and we can already show customers the value and versatility of our solution. Over the past 12 months, we have been working on turning the prototype into a product, which is mostly about assuring the quality of the different parts, from the consumables to the software. We aim for Limula to start generating revenues in 2026 with a first version of that product. At the same time, we have been working on the quality of Limula as a company. Customers need to trust our ability to deliver the number of machines and consumables they need, at a high quality. We are in the process of qualifying our supply chain to be a robust partner.

How big is the commercial potential for devices and reagents?

Everything suggests that it can be huge. Clinical centres are increasingly taking responsibility for manufacturing cell therapies at the point of care, which means that every hospital large enough to have specialized staff becomes a potential client. Then there are the biopharma manufacturers of successful cell therapies, such as CAR-T, with ambitious targets for increasing their output. As our installed base grows, it will drive the sales of consumables.

Despite CGT’s promise, there are also significant headwinds. The person championing cell therapies at the FDA resigned because of politics. VC funding for CGT startups is sinking. Pharma companies are abandoning research in AAV gene therapy.

As with every new technology, CGT received a lot of hype when it was new and a lot of capital when it was cheap. High expectations get deflated. Some people believe CGT will stay restricted to a long tail of rare diseases, others work hard to apply them to major diseases with a significant health burden. But even in the first case, the potential is still enormous. The situation today is paradoxical: Even if a treatment for a disease exists thanks to CGT, more than 90% of patients do not get access to it or die waiting for a manufacturing slot. Making these therapies accessible to patients who need them is an infrastructure problem. Access and reimbursement are societal questions. Reducing the manufacturing cost will increase the economic viability of treatments. In this regard, Limula is a critical piece in a complex puzzle.

You mentioned that manufacturers of CAR T-cell therapies are increasing their output. T cells are one important type of cell therapy, but there are also other cell types. Does your device work with all of them?

We have already demonstrated that LimONE works beautifully with T cells. We also collected data showing that the technology is applicable to hematopoietic stem cells, another important category of treatments with several products approved. For now, we have focused on the most commonly used cell therapies, but we have started to explore the device’s versatility and are actively looking for partnerships to test other cell types in emerging therapies, such as induced pluripotent stem cells.

As a small company, you also need to focus on the most promising markets in terms of geography. Where are they?

Europe is a good place to start selling our instrument. The Benelux countries are hot spots for cell therapy manufacturing. Legend and J&J just announced a 150 million dollar investment in new production facilities in Belgium. And European hospitals have a strong expertise in cell manufacturing. The Hospital Clinic Barcelona is leading an initiative of 14 Spanish hospitals for the decentralized manufacturing of cell therapies, with the ambition to expand their offering to other locations in Europe. We have been running pilot projects with key opinion leaders in Europe, but as we move into the commercial stage, we also explore the Asian and US markets.

Decentralized manufacturing in hospitals would make such therapies more accessible for patients. However, centralized manufacturing is more in line with established regulatory frameworks and simpler regarding quality control.

Europe is leading the decentralized approach. The challenge is regulatory indeed, and quality control needs to be standardized. With Limula’s machine, we offer automation and an audit trail. As of today, only some hospitals have the specific skills to treat patients with cell therapies. This places a significant burden on patients and their families. I know of a case illustrating this. An 8-year-old kid in the Middle East with cancer was in treatment for 4 years already but nothing worked. The only option left would have been to reach out to a center with a clinical trial in Europe. But in practical terms, the family would have to travel to Europe for two months. Who can afford this? Countries must build their capacity to bring these novel solutions to the patient, and Limula can help.