Microfluidic vortex shedding: a low-cost, high efficiency method for genetic modification to support cell engineering for cell-based immunotherapies

NIH RePORTER · NIH · N43 · $399,299 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Personalized gene-modified cell immunotherapies exist, but manufacturing has yet to be optimized to increase the broad availability of these life-saving therapies to patients in need. This proposal is focused on meeting this need with the continued development of microfluidic vortex shedding (μVS), a safe and rapid approach to genetically modify patient-derived immune cells. The long term objective of this proposal is to integrate μVS into the manufacturing workflow of cell-based cancer immunotherapies. The goal of this contract proposal to demonstrate the feasibility of μVS technology in generating representative Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cells (CAR-T) and T Cell Receptor T cells (TCR-T) cells. The research and development objectives are to: (1) demonstrate the technical performance of μVS transfection of primary T cells with clinically relevant CAR and TCR constructs, and (2) demonstrate the functionality and safety of transfected T cells generated by μVS in cell based assays. Pending the successful completion of these objectives, CAR-T and TCR-T cells will be engineered using patient-derived T cells, and commercial-scale processing and enrichment of sufficient genetically modified viable cells for clinical applications will be demonstrated.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10260803
Project number
75N91020C00030-0-9999-1
Recipient
INDEE, INC
Principal Investigator
JUSTIN JARRELL
Activity code
N43
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
$399,299
Award type
Project period
2020-09-08 → 2021-06-07