Three-dimensional (3D) cell aggregates are of great interest for many applications, including disease modeling, drug toxicity assessment, and manufacturing of stem cell-based products. Stirred-tank bioreactors are promising culture systems for 3D cell aggregates, as they allow efficient establishment and maintenance of cell aggregates, process monitoring and control, and process scale-up to larger volumes. Furthermore, they can be operated in perfusion mode, which allows 3D cell aggregates to be sustained longer than in traditional batch cultures. Researchers at the Instituto de…
Tuesday, March 27, 2018 Daily Archives
Cost Analysis of Cell Therapy Manufacture: Autologous Cell Therapies, Part 1
Cell therapies are a growing area of interest for the treatment of a number of indications such as neurological, cardiovascular, and ophthalmological maladies that are refractory to other more conventional drug therapies. A number of cell-based therapy products currently are undergoing clinical trials. The most common target is oncology, which represents 46% of all cell-based therapies through the use of traditional blood-cell and immune-cell–based therapies. For treatment of various cancers, immune cells, lymphocytes (natural killer cells, T cells, and B…
Sourcing Clinical-Grade Human Tissue: Considerations for Supporting Cell Therapy Development and Production
The rapidly developing global cell therapy market poses numerous industry challenges for drug development, process scalability, commercialization, and patient safety. The processes of procuring donated human tissue for clinical applications are fraught with many technical, ethical, and legal issues. Allogeneic cell therapies involving primary cell types such as bone marrow mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (BM-MSCs), hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), and T and natural killer (NK) cells for immunotherapy applications are especially challenging because of the vigorous process of screening…
Driving Cell Therapy Innovation: Applying Key Lessons from the Evolution and Commercialization of Protein-Based Therapies
After many trials and errors — and milestones — regenerative medicine has become a mainstream part of the biopharmaceutical industry, supported by at least 670 companies and clinics of all sizes. But many experiences in the protein-based industry segment can be leveraged to further improve successful commercialization of advanced therapies. At the 2017 Biotech Week Boston conference, BioProcess International editor in chief Anne Montgomery hosted a panel of industry cell therapy experts to discuss key lessons that can be gleaned…
Cell Expansion with Dissolvable Microcarriers
In recent years we have seen an exponential increase in the number of companies testing and validating new regenerative medicine products. Many of these products are reaching late-phase trials with the potential to receive final approval and marketing authorization from regulatory agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). In the past several years, we have seen successful launches of regenerative medicine products, including Holoclar (Holostem Advanced Therapies), Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel, Novartis), Yescarta…