Research Collaboration Aims to Revolutionize Treatment of Cancer through Efficient Production of High-Quality Immune Cell Therapies

ACEA Biosciences, now a part of Agilent Technologies, is excited to collaborate with the new NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT). CMaT is a consortium of universities, companies and clinical collaborators brought together to develop transformative tools and technologies for the consistent, scalable and low-cost production of high-quality living therapeutic cells. The center, launched in 2017 with a $20 million investment from the National Science Foundation, aims to revolutionize the treatment of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and other disorders by enabling broad use of potentially curative therapies that utilize living cells – such as immune cells and stem cells – as “drugs.”

“ACEA Biosciences is committed to improving processes related to cell therapy discovery and innovation,” said Dr. Yama Abassi, Vice President at ACEA Biosciences. “We are eager to work with the Krish Roy lab at Georgia Tech University to develop potency assays for CAR-T cells, which is a promising form of immunotherapy. The automated, high throughput xCELLigence Real Time Cell Analysis MP system will be used to measure the kinetics of tumor cell killing by the CAR-T cells, allowing for robust screening of CAR-T cell therapies. We are thrilled to provide an efficient platform to help advance manufacturing processes for these life-saving cell therapies.”

To facilitate the widespread application of these cutting-edge emerging treatments, CMaT will develop robust and scalable technologies, innovative analytical tools, and engineering systems that will enable industry and clinical facilities to reproducibly manufacture efficient, safe and affordable cell-therapy products. The center will also develop improved models for a robust supply chain, storage and distribution system for these therapeutic cell products.

In addition to the consistent manufacture of cell-based therapies, the public-private CMaT initiative will also help develop a skilled, diverse and inclusive bio-manufacturing workforce through extensive education and training activities at the K-12, technical college, undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels.

“We are pleased to welcome ACEA Biosciences to this new initiative,” said Krishnendu Roy, director of CMaT and the Robert A. Milton chair professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “The center will develop the technologies needed to use living cells in standardized therapies by clinicians to serve large numbers of patients worldwide. We are very excited about what this will mean to the world.”

Beyond Georgia Tech, the center includes major university partners – the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus – as well as affiliate partners such as the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, the Gladstone Institutes and Michigan Technological University. Additional international academic partners, as well as industry and the U.S. national laboratories, will also be critical collaborators in the effort.

About xCELLigence® Real Time Cell Analysis (RTCA)
ACEA Biosciences’ xCELLigence RTCA instruments are being used in both academia and industry for life science applications ranging from cancer immunotherapy, bacterial biofilms, vaccine development and cardiotoxicity testing. With the xCELLigence technology, scientists can non-invasively monitor the behavior of cells by quantifying cell proliferation, morphology change, and attachment quality in a label-free, real-time manner.

About ACEA Biosciences
ACEA Biosciences, a part of Agilent Technologies, is a pioneer in the development and commercialization of high performance cell analysis platforms for life science research. ACEA’s xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell Analysis instruments and NovoCyte® Quanteon flow cytometers are used in pre-clinical drug discovery and development, toxicology, safety pharmacology, and basic academic research. More than 2,500 instruments have been placed globally, and have been used in more than 1,800 peer-reviewed publications.