Bracco Imaging, a global pharmaceutical company leader that develops, manufactures and markets contrast agents and associated solutions for medical innovative healthcare solutions, and Limula, a life science tools company specializing in automated Cell and Gene Therapy manufacturing solutions, announce the launch of a research and development (R&D) project in collaboration with Prof. Nicola Vannini, an expert in T-cell metabolism at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Cell and Gene Therapies (CGT), also called Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs), represent a revolution in medicine. CAR-T and other cell therapies are already transforming the lives of cancer patients worldwide, with a global market expected to exceed $100 billion by 2034. The complex manufacturing of these treatments remains a bottleneck to their widespread adoption in the clinic. Cell selection and activation are critical steps in these processes, often followed by genetic manipulations.
The goal of this public-private partnership, funded through an innovation project grant from the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse, is to combine two innovations, lipid-based microbubbles and an automated cell processing technology, to offer an alternative to conventional magnetic beads for affinity-based cell selection and activation. In this context, microbubbles are used to modify the density of target cells through specific binding, enabling their selection by natural buoyancy.
