Biomed 05 | Cell Production Technology

Scinus Cell Expansion has developed a unique bioreactor system for the controlled cultivation of cells. The system is highly flexible and allows high-fold expansion of both adherent and suspension cell types to clinically relevant numbers. This involves a variety of relevant cell types including mesenchymal stromal cells, T cells, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), and organoids. 

Animal serum has been used for a long time in cell cultivation to stimulate the growth of the cells. This serum contains beneficial components, including essential nutrients, growth factors, cytokines, and hormones.

However, the composition of the serum is non-defined, leading to variations per batch, and the use of animal serum raises ethical concerns. Therefore, TNCBio develops new medium formulations that are well-defined and animal component free to increase the robustness of the cultivation and decrease the variation between batches.

Helia Biomonitoring and TU Eindhoven are developing sensors on based a technique called Biosensing By Particle Motion (BPM). This technique offers a solution for continuous biomolecular monitoring for a wide variety of substances in a pico- to millimolar range. It is based on the tracking of the motion of particles that are molecularly tethered to a surface, where the motion reveals reversible biochemical interactions with single-molecular resolution. In Biomed05, BPM technology will be optimized to continuously monitor cell stress and health. 

ChiralVision, Surfix and University of Twente are collaborating to develop new photonic sensors to allow detection of small-molecule binding by interferometry. The mass and/or conformational change of binding a molecule to a receptor causes a phase shift of the light within the photonic waveguide. This phase shift can be translated to the concentration of the biomarker. In Biomed05, this technique will be optimized to monitor the concentration of essential medium components. 

The bioreactor, cultivation medium, and sensor technology will be combined in a demonstrator that shows its value in next-generation cell manufacturing. This involves continuous monitoring of the bioreactor environment by automated microfluidic sampling and sample preparation for the sensor technology. These sensors will provide input that can be used to direct and optimize the cell cultivation process. Integration and development of the necessary components in the bioreactors is done by Bronkhorst and Demcon. 

The developed technologies and prototypes in this project will be evaluated by various end-users in our project (Ncardia, Batavia, UMC Utrecht). They will test the technologies and use it to optimize their cell production processes. The demonstrators in Biomed05 will focus on viral vector production (Batavia, UMC Utrecht), and iPSC cultivation and differentiation (Ncardia). These demonstrators should showcase the next-generation bioreactor technology with far-reaching control over cell culture processes, leading to high-quality cells and cell-derived products.