AcouSort and MFX enter a collaboration to streamline future cell therapy manufacturing

“We are very intrigued by this collaboration which we believe can result in a much smarter, effective and environmentally sustainable process to manufacture CAR-T cell therapies,” said AcouSort’s CEO Dr. Torsten Freltoft.

“We’re excited by this technology evaluation collaboration,” said Antoine Espinet, MFX CEO & co-founder. “By evaluating how AcouSort’s acoustic technology could integrate into the Cyto Engine bioreactor platform, we can more precisely control cell handling, reduce batch-to-batch patient sample variability while cutting time and cost per sample preparation.”

The collaboration will evaluate if AcouSort’s technology can be paired with MFX’s innovative bioreactor systems and workflows to streamline cell therapy manufacturing, with the aim to improve sample processing times and translation into cell expansion. This will contribute to decreasing the environmental burden and operational cost when producing novel advanced therapies and ultimately improve the accessibility of cell therapies.

MFX has together with several UK-based research groups and companies working on the development of next generation cell therapy production, formed the EcoCAR Consortium for sustainable CAR-T cell manufacturing. The Consortium recently received a major UK grant under the Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Programme, led by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust for execution of a project aiming at developing a new generation of CAR-T cell therapies by streamlining CAR-T cell manufacturing in a “one-pot” process using novel engineered lentiviral vectors in low-volume bioreactors.

In this multi-million-pound project, MFX will be responsible for delivering the hardware to be used in manufacturing the therapies, and AcouSort is acting as sub-supplier to MFX for the project. Within the EcoCAR project, MFX will be purchasing products and services from AcouSort to improve the collection of immune cells from donor blood samples as well as to investigate the use of AcouSort’s products for purifying cells after production.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT MFX, PLEASE CONTACT:
Cesare Cejas
E-mail: cesare@mfx.bio
VP-Innovation & Co-founder, MFX Ltd

ABOUT MFX
MFX develops modular, flexible, and digitally integrated bioreactor bioprocessing platforms for cell and gene manufacture, built upon the company’s proprietary planar bioreactor technology. MFX is on a mission to accompany the current advanced therapy development process by providing automated platforms that can be seamlessly translated from earliest research right through to manufacturing at industrial scale. MFX is based at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (GSK Science Park) in Stevenage, UK.