How Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre Networks Enable National Delivery of Cell and Gene Therapies
As cell and gene therapies move from scientific promise to clinical reality, the challenge for every health system is shifting from innovation to implementation.
How do you make these complex, patient-specific treatments accessible at scale - not in isolated pilot sites, but across an entire national network?
The UK’s Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre (ATTC) model offers one of the most instructive answers to that question.
By coupling regional infrastructure with coordinated national governance, the ATTCs have created a practical framework for how countries can scale up and out advanced therapies - transforming clinical potential into real-world delivery.
Now entering its seventh year, the network provides a valuable reference point for any country seeking to build a sustainable ecosystem for advanced therapy manufacturing, logistics, and care delivery.
Lonrú Consulting’s ATTCs at Scale project analyses how the network is performing today - and what it reveals about the future of distributed innovation in cell and gene therapy.
Using Lonrú’s curated dataset and the interactive ATTCs at Scale data tool (embedded below), we’ve mapped how more than 120 UK advanced therapy trials connect to the four regional hubs: iMATCH (Manchester), Midlands & Wales ATTC, Northern Alliance ATTC, and London ATTC.
From Dataset to Dashboard
Our analysis draws from curated data sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov, covering active and recently completed UK trials through 2024.
Each trial in the dataset has been mapped to one or more ATTC nodes using its hospital sites and institutional affiliations.
Where a study spans multiple ATTC regions, participant numbers have been divided evenly across nodes for visualisation purposes. These allocations have not been verified directly with ATTC teams and should be treated as indicative rather than audited figures.
The tool transforms this dataset into four interactive views:
1️⃣ Interactive Map
Explore the UK’s ATTC network geographically.
Each regional hub appears as a node on the map - click to reveal:
Total trials hosted at that node
Estimated participant counts
Leading modalities
Top sponsors and collaborators
Example: iMATCH (Manchester) currently shows 27 mapped trials and approximately 991 participants, with activity spanning T-cell therapies, lentiviral gene transfer, and early AAV programmes.
2️⃣ Trial Composition
This view compares trial counts by modality type across ATTC nodes.
Bars represent therapy categories such as cell therapy, ex vivo gene therapy, in vivo gene therapy, and gene editing.
Users can see at a glance that:
London ATTC dominates overall trial volume (~80 active studies), reflecting the density of sites across Guy’s, GOSH, and UCLH.
Midlands & Wales and Northern Alliance host smaller but growing portfolios, concentrated around translational manufacturing and readiness pilots.
iMATCH retains a strong cell therapy bias, with nearly half its mapped trials classified as T-cell based.
3️⃣ Node Scorecards
Each ATTC has its own performance card summarising:
Total mapped trials
Estimated participant count
Leading therapy modalities
Key sponsors active at that node
For instance, London ATTC shows 81 trials and roughly 4,476 participants, led by AAV gene therapy, T-cell therapies, and oncolytic vectors.
This structure makes it easy to benchmark regional specialisation and sponsor clustering.
4️⃣ Modality Distribution Heatmap
The heatmap aggregates proportional modality share across all four hubs.
Each cell represents a node-modality intersection, shaded by its relative weight.
Patterns stand out immediately:
London balances gene and cell therapies.
Midlands & Wales concentrates on viral vector programmes.
iMATCH is heavily weighted toward T-cell work.
Northern Alliance displays a more even, early-phase spread.
Methodology Summary
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (public registry, data cut-off January 2025).
Selection: UK-based interventional CGT/ATMP studies across Phase I–III.
Classification:
Trials assigned to ATTCs by hospital/institution field.
Modalities tagged using intervention text (e.g., “CAR-T”, “AAV”, “lentiviral”, “CRISPR”).
Estimates: Where a trial spans multiple ATTCs, participant numbers were divided evenly across nodes.
Verification: Data have not been validated directly with ATTC centres or trial sponsors.
This approach prioritises consistency and transparency over precision - giving an accurate macro-view of the UK network while acknowledging site-level variation.
Disclaimer
These data are sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov and represent a public-domain snapshot of registered studies as of 2025.
Figures presented here - including trial counts, patient estimates, and node allocations - are derived from registry information and have not been verified with ATTC teams or study sponsors.
Participant distributions across multiple sites are evenly apportioned for modelling purposes only.
Explore the Tool
The interactive dashboard below - ATTCs at Scale - brings this analysis to life. Dive into the map to explore individual centres, switch to composition charts to compare modalities, or use the heatmap to understand proportional strengths across the network. Each view represents a snapshot of how the UK’s advanced therapy ecosystem is scaling - quietly, collaboratively, and region by region.
Closing Insight
The ATTC network has matured from initiative to infrastructure, quietly underpinning how advanced therapies reach patients across the UK. By linking clinical readiness with manufacturing and governance, the network has become the functional interface between research ambition and patient delivery. As global attention moves from discovery to delivery, this network provides a model of what coordinated, data-driven translation can look like - and why infrastructure, not just innovation, defines impact.
