Scalable microfluidics that can address the challenge of delivery of large transgenes to therapeutic cells

Performance Period: 6/1/2020 to 11/15/2021

Genetic engineering of cells is commonly used in biologics manufacturing and enables cell therapies to provide a lifelong cure for diseases such as cancer, blood diseases, genetic blindness sand others. Yet the cost of manufacturing genetically engineered cells for therapies is significant, with high process complexity and variable cell product quality. The key step of gene modification in both biologics manufacturing and cell therapy is the delivery of recombinant therapeutic transgenes.

To accelerate the manufacturing innovation of both biologics and cell therapies, the goal of this project is to validate a cell engineering technology that uses a microfluidic transfection for delivery of therapeutic transgenes to four cell types of importance to the pharma industry. The microfluidic platform facilitates reagent-free, GMP-compliant transgene delivery using a process called mechanoporation, defined in this case as the rapid compression of cells to transiently open membrane pores and actively deliver molecules into cells. We will evaluate device and process parameters to efficiently deliver transgenes to each cell type.