Researchers pioneer production of CAR T-cells using high-density microfluidic bioreactor

Originally published by Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology on June 27, 2024

SMART researcher Dr. Wei-Xiang Sin holding the microfluidic chip within which T cells are activated, transduced, and expanded in a 2 milliliter growth chamber. Credit: SMART CAMP

Researchers have developed a novel method capable of producing clinical doses of viable autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells in a ultra-small automated closed-system microfluidic chip, roughly the size of a pack of cards.

The team from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, collaborated with researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS), Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), KK Women's & Children's Hospital (KKH) and Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

This method is the first time that a microbioreactor is used in the production of autologous cell therapy products. Specifically, the novel method was successfully used to manufacture and expand CAR-T cells that are as effective as cells produced using existing systems in a smaller footprint and less space, and using fewer seeding cell numbers and cell manufacturing reagents.

This could lead to more efficient and affordable methods of scaling-out autologous cell therapy manufacturing, and could even potentially enable point-of-care manufacturing of CAR T-cells outside of a laboratory setting—such as in hospitals and wards.

Read more

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research finds resin that destroys coronavirus on plastic surfaces

Image
O riginally published by University of Jyväskylä, on January 30, 2024 Studying the impact of rosin-functionalized plastic and standard LDPE on the structure of HCoV-OC43 using (A) TEM and (B) AFM in liquid. The scale bar corresponds to 100 nm and 1 µm in the TEM and AFM images, respectively. In panel B, the blue circle highlights a doughnut-shaped virus. (C) The histogram derived from the AFM images illustrates the average size distribution of the height of individual viruses after being flushed from their respective surfaces. Credit: Microbiology Spectrum (2024). DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03008-23 Researchers at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland , are currently developing anti-viral surfaces to decrease the spread of infectious diseases. A recent study published in Microbiology Spectrum found that a resin ingredient is effective against coronaviruses and strongly decreases their infectivity on plastic surfaces. Viruses may persist on solid surfaces for long periods, which ma
Read more

Engineered Rabies Virus Illuminates Neural Circuitry

Image
Originally published by Hannah Thomasy, PhD, for the Scientist on June 14, 2024 Scientists turned a deadly virus into a crucial tool for understanding the wiring of the brain.   Rabies labeling helps scientists identify neurons in the primary visual cortex that connect to two different higher visual brain regions. Marina Garrett  In 1906 , pathologist Camillo Golgi and neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of the nervous system . More than a century later, the puzzle of nervous system organization —the intricately tangled mess that results from each neuron’s connections to thousands of others— remains incomplete . Yet, fully developing scientific understanding of these connections is crucial , said Edward Callaway , a systems neurobiologist at the Salk Institute . “If you don’t have some knowledge about how the different parts are interacting , there’s no way to generate a hypothesis about how they’re working together .”  N
Read more

Study discovers cellular activity that hints recycling is in our DNA

Image
Originally published by by Rose Miyatsu, University of California - Santa Cruz , on May 11, 2024 Shown is the splicing pathway. The pre-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) has exons (blue) and introns (pink). The spliceosome (not shown) was known to catalyze two chemical reactions (black arrows) in a two-step process (green arrows labeled 1 and 2) that splice the exons together and removes the intron as a lariat. This study demonstrates that after splicing is finished, the spliceosome is still active and can convert the lariat intron into a circle using a third reaction (green arrow 3) marked by an asterix. Credit: Manuel Ares, UC Santa Cruz Although you may not appreciate them, or have even heard of them, throughout your body , countless microscopic machines called spliceosomes are hard at work . As you sit and read, they are faithfully and rapidly putting back together the broken information in your genes by removing sequences called " introns " so that your messenger RNAs can
Read more