Federico Perdomo-Celis | Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer
CellRep

Advanced Therapies USA 2026 - Day 1 @ 10:25

AI-Driven Small Molecules to Enhance Cell Therapy Potency and Persistence

T cell therapies are only as good as the cells that reach the patient, yet ex vivo manufacturing itself drives exhaustion and erodes the stem-like memory phenotypes that underpin durable response. We have built an AI-driven discovery platform that predicts novel intracellular targets and designs small molecules to address this at its source. Added during ex vivo expansion and washed out before infusion, these compounds act as manufacturing reagents rather than systemic drugs, allowing integration under a sponsor's existing IND without a standalone regulatory filing. In primary human T cells, our lead compound drives a roughly 16-fold increase in polyfunctionality, a twofold enrichment of stem-like memory cells, elevated TCF-1, and reduced exhaustion. Because the approach is target-driven and platform-based, it is modality-agnostic across CAR-T and next-generation cell therapies.

Federico Perdomo-Celis, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, CellRep

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Federico Perdomo-Celis / AI-Driven Small Molecules to Enhance Cell Therapy Potency and Persistence

Federico Perdomo-Celis, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer,
CellRep

Dr. Federico Perdomo-Celis is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of CellRep. An MD with a PhD in Immunology and postdoctoral training at Institut Pasteur (Paris), he has more than ten years of research in T cell biology, where he pioneered the discovery that dysfunctional CD8+ T cells can be...

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