Celleo’s Larkem® V40 has been named a Winner in the Product Design (Medical and Scientific) category of the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards, for a closed, automated system that can aseptically fill vials in Grade C/D environments.

Celleo is proud to announce that Larkem® V40 has been named a 2026 Australian Good Design Award Winner in the Product Design (Medical and Scientific) category. Winners were announced on 6 October as part of Good Design Week, ahead of the awards ceremony at ICC Sydney on Friday 9 October. The entry, “Celleo’s Larkem® V40 – Closed Vial Fill for Cell Therapy”, was judged by an independent jury of more than 100 Australian and international design experts on good design, design innovation and design impact.

The step the award recognises

Every cell therapy batch needs vials, whether release samples, retained samples, cell banks and intermediates, or the drug product itself where it is supplied in vials. For a CAR-T batch that is typically 20 to 40 vials for QC release testing and sample retains, hand-filled by skilled operators in a Grade A/B cleanroom suite, consuming up to half a day of production time, often at the moment you’re fully invested in the batch. Across the industry, QC sample provision absorbs an estimated 5 to 10 per cent of global CAR-T production capacity. In cell banking, manual filling remains the industry standard, and the consequences are familiar. Vial-to-vial and bank-to-bank variability, prolonged processing that intensifies DMSO exposure, sterility risk from open processing, and a high demand on operator time and cleanroom resources.

Larkem V40 is a closed system for automated GMP vial filling in Grade C and D environments. To aseptically fill up to 40 vials in parallel, Larkem evacuates air from the closed single-use set incorporating the vials, before displacing the vacuum with fluid. The manifolded vials are automatically sealed and separated, providing industry-standard vials for subsequent use. A 40-vial fill takes around eight minutes.

For a manufacturer, that means a faster and more consistent step and less reliance on the most expensive room in the building. For patients, the aim is more doses from the facilities that already exist.

The Good Design Awards jury said: “The Jury recognises Celleo’s Larkem V40 as an innovative solution addressing a critical unmet need in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. The platform’s fully closed, automated vial filling system represents a significant technical achievement, replacing manual, contamination-prone processes with precise, scalable automation that eliminates reliance on high-grade cleanrooms. The Jury commends the team for tackling a complex manufacturing challenge with the potential to reduce batch failure rates, lower contamination risk and meaningfully improve patient access to life-saving therapies, demonstrating a well-informed product package with far-reaching healthcare impact.”

Independent evaluations

Two independent evaluations of Larkem V40 have been published in 2026. Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult evaluated the system for iPSC cell banking at its Edinburgh laboratories, creating a 200-vial cell bank with no statistical differences between five replicate runs, and equivalent cell viability, concentration, post-thaw recovery and pluripotency to manual operations. Read the CGT Catapult evaluation. CCRM Nordic evaluated the system for QC sample provision in a CAR-T workflow at its Gothenburg facility, reporting increased volume filling accuracy compared with manual vial filling, with viability, cell concentration, phenotype and potency equivalent to manual operations. Read the CCRM Nordic evaluation.

“Larkem exists because the people making these therapies told us vial filling was the step they could not scale,” said David Kneen, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Celleo. “This award recognises a team that took a hard manufacturing problem and designed a better way through it, and the customers and partners who put the system through its paces in their own facilities. It comes as Larkem systems are being installed with cell therapy manufacturers worldwide.”

Designed with the people who do the work

Celleo built the V40 after more than a hundred interviews with the scientists and operators who make cell therapies. The design brief was to close the process, automate it, and make it simple enough that an operator trusts it on the first day.

“Everything about the V40 design, from the nuances around single-use packaging to the high-definition user interface, evolved out of extensive voice of customer,” said Mark Rob, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Celleo. “You know a good design in manufacturing when end users embrace it intuitively, with little more than a quick introduction.”

Made in Victoria, installed overseas

Larkem V40 systems are installed at the facilities of a biopharma multinational that makes CAR-T therapies, in the United States and Europe. The system is assembled in Melbourne. The core components within its single-use kits are made in Victoria in a cleanroom built to Celleo’s requirements, with assembly, packaging and sterilisation completed in Singapore.

Larkem will be shown at Advanced Therapies Week in San Diego, 18 to 21 January 2027. To arrange a conversation before then, contact Celleo.

About the Australian Good Design Awards

Established in 1958, the Australian Good Design Awards are Australia’s longest-running international design awards program, spanning 13 overarching design disciplines and more than 30 categories. The 2026 Winners were announced on 6 October; the ceremony on Friday 9 October will name the Best in Discipline winners, the Special Accolades, the Good Design Award for Sustainability and the Australian Good Design Award of the Year. More at good-design.org.

Media: the release, images and video are in the Celleo media kit.

Larkem V40 in action