A Name That Outgrew Itself
When SAP first introduced its orchestration platform for cell and gene therapies, the category was clearly defined: complex biological medicines requiring end-to-end traceability, time-critical logistics, and patient-level coordination. The product name fit well.
But advanced therapies does not stand still.
The platform has been built and proven for cell and gene therapy – but its core capabilities – treatment order management, shipment lifecycle tracking, chain-of-identity and custody traceability, scheduling and end-to-end orchestration, are not exclusive to that therapy type. The same operational complexity that defines CAR-T and gene therapy exists in radioligand therapy, allogeneic programs, plasma-derived biologics, and class 3 medical devices. The platform was always designed with individual capabilities and features woven together using events & micro-services based internal architecture and hence can be the foundation to serve all of them. A name that says “Cell and Gene” no longer reflects that potential.
What Changes – and What Doesn't
The name changes. SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration becomes SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration.
The platform itself is not changing. All current features, including treatment order management, shipment lifecycle tracking, COI/COC monitoring and traceability, scheduling, exception management, and S/4HANA integration, remain exactly as they are. The technology, architecture, APIs, and events all stay the same. Existing documentation and technical references will be updated to reflect the new name soon.
What is changing is the scope of our roadmap and the range of customers we are innovating with SAP AI agents and Joule engagement layer accelerating this evolutionary morphing.
Why “Advanced Therapy”?
Advanced therapy is a term widely used in the life sciences industry – formalized by the EMA as Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) — to describe medicines that go beyond traditional small molecules and biologics. They share a common set of operational challenges: supply chain complexity, chain-of-identity tracking, cold-chain logistics, regulatory traceability, and patient-level orchestration. These include:
- Cell therapies — autologous (patient-specific) and allogeneic (donor-based)
- Gene therapies — viral vector delivery, in vivo and ex vivo approaches
- Radioligand therapies — targeted radiopharmaceuticals combining a targeting molecule with a radioactive payload
- Combination products — medical devices integrated with biologics
- Plasma-derived biologics — derived from donated blood plasma through fractionation
What unites them is not the science – it is the operational complexity. And that is exactly what the SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration platform was designed to handle.
The Expansion Areas
- Medical Device Integration – A Differentiated Opportunity
Many advanced therapies require medical devices as part of the treatment – injection systems, preparation kits, surgical instruments – shipped separately from the drug product but logically linked to the same patient and procedure. SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration already supports this correlation through parallel flow steps and treatment orders that link drug products and devices across different shipment types and timescales.
The roadmap extends this further: supporting the full device lifecycle including kit dispatch, usage tracking, and return logistics for reusable instruments, as well as deeper orchestration of combination products where a device and a biologic are regulatory-linked as a single therapy.
2. Plasma-Derived Biologics – From Donation to Fractionation
Plasma-derived biologics share key supply chain characteristics with cell and gene therapies: donation collection, chain-of-identity tracking, complex multi-step processing, and end-to-end traceability from donor to finished product. The difference is scale – plasma fractionation operates at industrial volumes – but the orchestration challenge is the same.
SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration plans to extend its proven chain-of-identity and traceability model to cover donation collection and processing orchestration for plasma-derived products.
3. Allogeneic Therapy – Extending Donation Processing
SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration already supports allogeneic therapies – donor-derived, off-the-shelf products manufactured in batches rather than per patient. The roadmap will add donation processing capabilities, covering the early stages when donor material is collected, qualified, and tracked before it enters the manufacturing process. This gives therapy developers and CMOs one platform for the entire allogeneic lifecycle, from donation to patient delivery.
4. Radioligand Therapy – Extending Treatment Plan Support
SAP Advanced Therapy Orchestration already supports radioligand therapy – including multiple shipment requests per treatment cycle, tight scheduling windows by isotope half-lives, and cold chain logistics with shelf-lives measured in hours rather than days. The roadmap will add treatment plan capabilities – modeling multi-cycle treatment schedules where a single patient receives multiple doses over weeks or months, each requiring its own manufacturing, logistics, and scheduling coordination. This gives nuclear pharmacy networks and therapy developers the orchestration backbone for dose-level planning across the full course of treatment.
Why Now? What this Means for You
The timing is deliberate. After 14 releases, and multiple productive customers with proven deployments across different modalities, the platform has outgrown its original name. For current customers, nothing changes in your environment – your experience, integration, and ongoing support will remain exactly as they are. The transition to the new name happens automatically within your systems.
For organizations orchestrating radioligand therapies, plasma-derived products, allogeneic programs, or combination devices: the supply chain complexity you are managing today – the scheduling pressure, the traceability requirements, the multi-party coordination – is what this platform was built to solve. We invite you to explore it.
