CellFlow - Chemical-Free Cell Isolation for Commercial-Scale Cell Therapy Manufacturing

Cell-derived products have potential as promising therapeutic approaches for the treatment of a wide range of conditions (e.g. neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, cardiac failure). Cell therapies require large scale supplies of viable cells at high purity levels, driving advancements in cell separation technologies to address downstream processing bottlenecks to achieving high separation efficiency, throughput and sample purity at scale. The key project objectives are to develop, optimise and scale-up a low-cost, chemical-free continuous-flow cell separator/concentrator and demonstrate improved cell extraction efficiency and cell viability in pilot-scale cell therapy manufacturing trials. The proposed innovation lies in proprietary acoustic enhancements for particle manipulation, that provide a cost-effective, contactless, scalable solution for downstream bioprocessing - specifically cell/particle separation/concentration. Ultra low-cost, low energy acoustic methods enable increased throughput, resulting in a step-change beyond state-of-the-art downstream processing techniques. Successful project outcomes will overcome a key biomanufacturing bottleneck, helping to improve commercial viability of the UK Cell Therapy industry, thereby unlocking a sustainable UK bioeconomy.