Astraveus SAS, the Benchtop Cell Factory company, has announced the "first ever successful" end-to-end production of CAR-T cells within a microfluidic benchtop system.
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Success concept.
Using its fully automated Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory, Astraveus has been able to demonstrate the potential of its unique microfluidic cell therapy processing approach, which has the ability to decrease manufacturing costs and increase throughput by an order of magnitude.
The fully automated Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory integrates the entire cell therapy manufacturing process and onboard analytics into an all-in-one system, harnessing advanced microfluidic technology for optimal cell quality and efficient processing. Through scalable parallelisation from pre-clinical to commercial stages, the Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory drastically reduces cost of goods, minimises required lab space, and eliminates cell stress throughout the manufacturing process.
Jérémie Laurent, PhD, chief executive officer of Astraveus, said: "We are incredibly excited to see our team’s efforts come to fruition as we prepare for the launch of the Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory. For the first time, CAR-T cells have been successfully produced using a fully automated, end-to-end microfluidic system, delivering the proof of concept for our purpose-built benchtop cell factory.
“Our approach has successfully miniaturised a hugely complex process, reducing the scale of the manufacturing system to the size of a book – less than one hundredth the size of existing technologies. With a production time of only 26 hours, we have also demonstrated that our bead-free microfluidic selection technology enables fast CAR-T cell manufacturing. These results show its potential to be much cheaper than rival technologies.”
Prof. Jérôme Larghero, Cell & Gene Therapies, MEARY Center, Paris, and Member of Astraveus’ Scientific Advisory Board, said: “By making its production more scalable, cheaper and decentralised, Astraveus is laying the foundation for making cell therapies the new standard of care. While this is the first step, there is huge potential for the Lakhesys Benchtop Cell Factory to transform the production of cell and gene therapies for the benefit of patients."
