Quell Therapeutics Launches New UK Trial of a Cutting-Edge Cell Therapy for Hard to Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis and Systemic Sclerosis

London, UK – 3 March 2026 – Quell Therapeutics, a pioneering UK cell therapy company, has launched a new clinical trial in the UK to explore a new, experimental one-time treatment for difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Systemic sclerosis (SSc).

The clinical study – called “CHILL” – was approved recently by the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and is now enrolling patients at leading hospitals in Oxford, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle and London. The trial will also include several hospitals in Germany and Spain.

The CHILL study aims to recruit people with RA or SSc who do not respond well to existing therapies. In autoimmune diseases like RA and SSc, the immune system attacks healthy parts of the body by mistake. This causes ongoing inflammation, pain and tissue damage among other debilitating symptoms that negatively affect daily life. 

Quell’s QEL-005 is a new type of ‘cell therapy’ that uses a patient’s own immune cells – called T-regulatory cells or Treg cells – which are collected from the blood, engineered and enhanced in the lab, and then returned to the patient. Treg cells are the ‘peacekeepers’ of the immune system and their job is to calm things down once a threat has passed. They stop other immune cells from overreacting and restore immune balance rather than shutting down the entire immune system.

Many current treatments work by broadly suppressing the immune system. While these can help, they do not work for everyone and can have side effects. QEL-005 is designed to act more precisely at the areas of inflammation, which may make it safer and more tolerable for people who have not responded to existing treatments.

The discovery of Treg cells and their crucial role in maintaining balance in the immune system was recognised in 2025 with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. 

Full details of the CHILL study are available at www.chillstudy.life.

Open Arms the Oxford Patient Engagement Network for Rheumatoid Arthritis, commented “for many people living with rheumatoid arthritis or systemic sclerosis, the treatments available today simply don’t go far enough to control symptoms or protect their quality of life. Patients tell us time and again how exhausting it is to cycle through therapies that either don’t work well for them or come with difficult side effects. That is why exploring novel, more targeted approaches like QEL‑005 is so important.” 

Scleroderma and Raynaud’s UK (SRUK) the UK’s Patient Advocacy Group for Scleroderma and Raynaud’s, commented “Scleroderma can severely affect a person’s health and daily life, and many patients still cycle through treatments that offer only limited relief. That is why there is such an urgent need for innovative treatments that go beyond broad immune suppression and act more precisely at the source of inflammation.”

Professor Christopher Buckley from the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and Chief Investigator for the CHILL study commented “People living with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Systemic Sclerosis often hope for a cure. But finding a cure is hard if treatments only “turn down” inflammation without helping the body repair and restore damaged tissue. Until recently, most treatments for immune-driven inflammatory diseases have focused on suppressing the immune system to reduce inflammation. Newer approaches, such as CAR T-cell therapy, can remove the harmful immune cells that are driving disease and may help the body begin to “reset” and heal. However, standard CAR T cells work by killing cells — they don’t guide the immune system back into balance. We believe a different approach, called CAR-Tregs, could do that. CAR-Tregs are a type of immune cell designed to calm and control immune reactions and support healthy tissue repair. We think this may lead to a deeper, longer-lasting regulation of the immune system and damaged tissues, leading potentially to a cure. As the chief investigator of this study, I’m excited to work with a strong team of clinician-scientists across Europe and researchers at Quell.”

Professor Georg Schett, Principal Investigator for the University Hospital Erlangen CHILL site, commented “Providing a stable regulatory immune cell environment at sites of inflammation is a mesmerizing therapeutic concept for chronic inflammatory diseases. The idea of activating T regulatory cells in a site-directed way, in B-cell rich lymphatic tissues and sites of inflammation may provide peripheral immune tolerance and intercept autoimmune disease."

Dr Luke Devey, Chief Medical Officer at Quell, commented “I am delighted to see the level of enthusiasm in the physician and patient community for the CHILL study of QEL-005, a potential new therapy for people living with scleroderma and difficult to treat rheumatoid arthritis. With advice from patients and leading physician scientists, we have developed a patient-centric clinical trial protocol which will determine the effectiveness of QEL-005, while carefully safeguarding patient safety. I look forward to enrolling our first patients in the coming weeks.”