Xcell Biosciences Australia PTY LTD (Xcellbio), an affiliate of Xcell Biosciences, Inc., a platform company focused on cell and gene therapy applications, and Royal Perth Hospital announced a collaboration aimed at developing an automated, clinical-scale manufacturing workflow for therapies based on tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) using the AVATAR™ Foundry system. Ultimately, the goal is to empower Royal Perth Hospital physicians and clinical researchers to rapidly manufacture potent TIL therapies for use in clinical trials.
TIL therapies are a promising type of cellular immunotherapy used to treat a broad range of solid malignant tumors, with the first FDA approval of a TIL-based therapy taking place in 2024. These therapies have proven to achieve durable complete responses in patients but require tens of billions of therapeutic cells to achieve sufficient clinical potency. Current manufacturing processes for TIL therapies are cumbersome and slow, requiring many weeks of manual and labor-intensive efforts to achieve an effective dose.
To address these challenges, Xcellbio has developed the AVATAR platform to expedite the development and manufacture of potent cell therapies. The platform uses a proprietary incubation technology to enhance the metabolic fitness of TILs, resulting in a potent and persistent therapeutic product that can overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. The AVATAR Foundry system was designed to produce cell therapies under current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) protocols in a fully automated capacity.
“At Royal Perth Hospital, we are dedicated to exploring cutting-edge approaches for cell therapies to enable the best care for our patients,” said Dr. Zlatibor Velickovic, Director of the Ray and Bill Dobney Cell and Tissue Therapies WA facility at Royal Perth Hospital. “We are excited to team up with scientists at Xcellbio to develop a much-needed automated workflow for TIL manufacturing, and to implement the AVATAR Foundry system as the newest technology innovation in our center.”
Through this agreement, Xcellbio scientists will work with the Royal Perth Hospital team to develop an automated TIL manufacturing process based on AVATAR platform that achieves key goals for cell quality, quantity, and potency. The resulting workflow will be established in the hospital’s cell therapy facility to support clinical trials using TILs.
“The emerging therapeutic class of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes is incredibly exciting, in particular for solid tumors. Current manufacturing processes require long expansion times and high cell doses to be effective in patients. The AVATAR platform will reduce manufacturing time and increase therapeutic potency,” said James Lim, co-founder and CSO at Xcellbio.
“TILs provide a great use case for our technologies and this collaboration with the fantastic team at Royal Perth Hospital is an opportunity to expand the availability of these life-saving therapies to patients,” said Brian Feth, co-founder and CEO at Xcellbio. “We are pleased to join forces with this group to improve TIL manufacturing and to make these important therapies a more feasible option for patients in Australia and, ultimately, around the world.”
About Xcell Biosciences
Xcellbio is driven by its mission to enhance the performance and safety of cell and gene-based therapies through the design and development of revolutionary technology platforms. The company’s commercial instruments and software allow researchers to discover novel insights into immune and tumor biology and enable the translation of these insights at patient scale through the development of its pioneering cGMP cell therapy manufacturing platform. Based in Melbourne and San Francisco, Xcellbio can also be found online at www.xcellbio.com.
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