Author Archives: Richard Grant

Acoustic Cell Processing: An Innovation in Cell-Therapy Manufacturing

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Richard Grant, chief product officer, FloDesign FloDesign is experimenting with applications of acoustics to cell-therapy manufacturing. An electric transducer is attached to a closed-flow system and generates forward propagating waves that are reflected as backward propagating waves. This sets up three-dimensional standing waves within the cell (flow) chamber. When cells enter the flow channel, acoustic forces cause then to cluster within the nodes of those standing waves, ultimately settling out through enhanced gravitational means. Acoustic cell processing is scalable and…

August 23, 2018

Planning for Commercial Scale of Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Products, Part 2: Clinical Efficacy, Reimbursement, and Needle-to-Needle Logistics

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Cell therapy is an emerging pillar in healthcare with the potential to provide curative solutions to a wide range of indications. The biological complexities through which cell technologies exert their clinical impact (especially those used in immunotherapies for cancer) provide opportunities for novel modes of immune regulation, cell targeting, and payload delivery. Cells also can serve as vehicles for genetic content, which the gene therapy industry is now investigating. Since early 2004, Invetech has worked with organizations dedicated to cell…

October 15, 2015

Planning for Commercial Scale of Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Products, Part 1: Achieving Manufacturability and Managing Cost of Goods

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Much mystique and mystery surround the emerging industries of cell therapy and regenerative medicine. As companies progress toward commercial manufacture with potential game changers (e.g., cures for cancer and diabetes) the industry could be on the verge of significant breakthroughs. However, with no real successes to date, the question is raised: What core attributes are required to achieve commercial success? The tale of Dendreon’s struggles highlights how difficult it can be to commercialize even an approved cell therapy product. Since…

April 14, 2015

Thinking Strategically

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At the recent Phacilitate Gene and Cell Therapy Conference (27–29 January 2014 in Washington, DC), BPI’s editor in chief Anne Montgomery and publisher Brian Caine spoke with Richard Grant, executive vice president, life sciences, at Invetech (www.invetech.com.au); and Brian Hanrahan, program manager at Invetech. They and their colleagues were instrumental in advising us how to bring ongoing discussions of regenerative medicines into BPI four years ago for the first Cell Therapy Supplement issue. We asked them to comment generally on…

March 1, 2014