Development of an optical system for on-line tracking of cell growth on microcarriers

In order that people can live longer and lead more active lives there is a need to develop novel affordable and effective treatments for ill health. In some cases, cells that we have within our own bodies can be used to repair damaged tissues or organs. However, in adults, this repair mechanism is very limited and often inefficient so we may need to rely on cells from donors. Unfortunately, since it takes billions of cells to repair, for example the heart muscle of a heart-attack patient, we must isolate cells from donors and expand their numbers before they can be used for treatment. So far we can do this at the laboratory scale, generating for instance, millions of mesenchymal stem cells in a stirred tank over a period of 2 weeks. However, as we consider how this will be achieved on a bigger manufacturing scale, we need to develop tools that will help us monitor and control the process to ensure the cells grown in this way are the same every time - just as we would expect other medicines to be identical from batch to batch. This feasibility project aims to combine the expertise of both biologists and engineers, to create an optical device that can monitor the growth of these cells in this stirred tank environment by giving the operator information about cell number and morphology. If successful, it will help optimise growing conditions so enough cells to treat multiple patients can be manufactured consistently.

In order to make the manufacture of new cell-based therapy products commercially viable such that society can benefit from them, the development of scalable bioprocessing techniques for producing large numbers of clinically relevant cells is critical. One method being developed relies on adherent cells such as mesenchymal stem cells to be grown on microcarriers in a stirred tank bioreactor. The One impact of this project would be to revolutionise how this process is monitored and potentially controlled in the future such that high quality cells (i.e. product) are consistently manufactured and cell yields maximised.

The innovative study proposed here will generate an optical device based on interferometry to image moving microcarriers within the stirred tank bioreactor. This approach moves away from the need to manually sample from the bioreactor and carry out off-line analysis in order to assess cell growth progression and morphology and when to supplement in additional microcarriers in order to maximise cell yield. Therefore, with potential benefits to not just the cell-based therapy or regenerative medicine community but the bioprocessing community as a whole, the rights to related IP would carry considerable prestige and be worthy of further exploitation.

In addition, this project will have impact in other areas of high value manufacturing. The interferometric and machine vision techniques developed will have potential impact on other areas of high value manufacturing where dynamic interferometric detection of sub-micron scale defects on roll-to-roll processes such as those emerging for vapour barrier coatings for use in OLED display and solar PV technologies. There is potential impact for metrology instrumentation companies through IP exploitation in order to produce marketable cutting edge detection technologies for industry.