Project to tackle scalability during cell therapy manufacture

A collaboration between The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult) and Plurify, a recent spinout from the CGT Catapult and Deep Science Ventures has received over £340,000 funding from Innovate UK as part of the Transforming Medicines Manufacturing Programme. The project will focus on technology development that will improves the purity of cell therapies, to make them safer, more efficacious and less costly to produce.

During production of cell therapies, unwanted cell types can form in the product which can impact the effectiveness of the treatment or, in the worst cases, can cause the patient harm. Existing approaches to remove these impurities are not fully effective or scalable, presenting a barrier to both the development and use of these therapies.

The funding will enable the partnership to develop and test a technology that removes the unwanted residual cells and work with the cell therapy industry, by applying this technology to individual developers and manufacturers’ own production processes.

Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive of the CGT Catapult commented: “Plurify’s innovative technology and expertise could overcome existing challenges in the development of cell therapies. Through working with this exciting organisation to create a scalable technology that improves the safety and efficacy of these products, we aim to help more therapies progress to market and become available to patients.”

Djordje Djordjevic, Co-Founder and CEO of Plurify commented: “We are very grateful to Innovate UK for awarding us this grant, which is helping us develop and apply our novel purification technology in industrially relevant settings. It’s wonderful that we can simultaneously deepen our collaboration with the CGT Catapult, tapping into their depth of expertise and ensuring our strategic alignment with the realities of UK’s cell and gene therapy industry. We are very excited for the outcomes of this project which will bring a new solution to cell therapy manufacturers to ultimately get more next-generation therapies to the patients that need them.”

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