How T Cell Activation Redefines TIL and CAR-T Manufacturing (Boosting Success Rates to 95%) with Chantale Bernatchez – Part 1

May 5, 2026

The most underappreciated parameter in cell therapy process development is not your bioreactor, your media, or your activation protocol. It is the patient. Chantale Bernatchez has spent 20 years learning that lesson the hard way, watching the same manufacturing process succeed brilliantly with one donor and fail completely with the next. In this episode, she explains why starting material variability is the defining challenge of cell therapy manufacturing, and what it actually takes to build a process robust enough to survive it.

Chantale Bernatchez is Head of Process Development at CTMC, a joint venture between Resilience and MD Anderson Cancer Center. She holds a PhD in immunology and has spent two decades advancing T cell therapy from early research programs at MD Anderson to GMP-compliant clinical manufacturing. She holds four patents in adoptive cell therapy.

Listen to part one of this podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hrFsmBWsMEIRRgHHf8pnd?si=L49vVJUlTvuYhZE6XcbMfA

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