| Title | Bioengineered Soft Microfibers Improve T-Cell Production | |
| Date | Saturday January 20 2018, @01:16AM | |
| Author | Fnord666 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the that's-Mr.-T-cells-to-you dept. | ||
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
T cells play a key role in the body's immune response against pathogens. As a new class of therapeutic approaches, T cells are being harnessed to fight cancer, promising more precise, longer-lasting mitigation than traditional, chemical-based approaches. These "living drugs" are poised to transform medicine, with a growing number of cellular therapies receiving FDA-approval.
A current bottleneck in these approaches and other Adoptive T-cell Therapies (ACTs) is the production of sufficient numbers of high quality T cells. As a starting material, cells are isolated from the patient and then modified and grown outside the body in a bioreactor.
[...] A Columbia Engineering team has developed a new method for improving T-cell manufacture by focusing on the materials involved in this process. The team is a collaboration between Biomedical Engineering faculty Lance C. Kam and Helen H. Lu, whose research programs include immune engineering and smart biomaterial design. Their study, which is published today in Advanced Biosystems, uses a polymer mesh to activate the T cells, a critical step for their production. This approach simplifies processing compared to systems in use today. In addition, making the fibers out of a mechanically soft material improved T-cell growth, outperforming the current gold standard on several fronts.
"Our report shows that this soft mesh material increases the number of functional cells that can be produced in a single step," Kam says. "In fact, our system provided nearly an order of magnitude more cells in a single process. What's especially exciting is that we've been able to expand cells isolated from patients undergoing treatment for leukemia. These cells are often very difficult to activate and expand, and this has been a barrier to using cellular immunotherapy for the people who need it."
[...] Beyond simplifying the process of cell expansion and improving T-cells expansion, Kam and Lu envision that the mesh platform will have applications beyond immunotherapy. They are refining their platform and exploring how T cells from cancer patients respond to their materials. Says Lu, "It is truly exciting to see how these bioinspired matrices can direct cell function and be successfully used for T-cell therapy."
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printed from SoylentNews, Bioengineered Soft Microfibers Improve T-Cell Production on 2024-04-19 10:51:08