miFACTS: Microfluidic system for Flexible Automated Cell Transduction and Selection

Cell therapy promises to become a globally used approach to treat important diseases, such as cancer. Current regimes can involve removing a patient's white blood cells (e.g. T-cells), reprogramming them to fight cancer and then reintroducing them to the patient. Current cellular reprogramming techniques are very inefficient (e.g. as low as 3%) and involve complex, inflexible techniques for production. Our proposed project synergises cellular reprogramming and manufacturing expertise (from Cell Therapy Catapult) with novel, single cell manipulation and microfluidic expertise (from Sphere Fluidics Limited) with cell therapy manufacturing and end user expertise (from Cellular Therapeutics Ltd and GlaxoSmithKline). This world-class team will build, test and demonstrate a new cell therapy production microfluidic device that enables the flexible manufacture of high quality, engineered cells in a more rapid, efficient and less costly manner. This will accelerate discovery and improve production of new, valuable cell therapies - giving UK companies a significant lead in this area and improving the quality of patient healthcare across the world.