Cell therapy has shown a ton of promise in the past decade and we may be on the cusp of yet another great advancement. During the manufacturing process for activated T-cells, the technicians usually introduce antibodies and cytokines to the cells so they can receive genetic material and grow. However, this process only really works on a small scale. April Kloxin, Ph.D at the University of Delaware took a different approach by imitating the biological environment that T-cells naturally experience in the body. Her team did this by using hydrogel, a soft and thin hydrated coating, with biocompatible (safe for the body) polymers built into it. These hydrogels have different “stiffness” to them depending on what tissue the research team wants to imitate and can be dissolved with specific wavelengths of light to harvest cells. In this case, it imitated the tissue in the lymph nodes where T-cells are naturally activated in vivo. This new system produced 3 times more engineered T-cells than traditional culture plates. Scaling up this production is highly promising and could potentially make cell therapy more efficient and accessible to those who need it.
For those interested, here is the original article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admt.202201155
How far along is this research? Do you think that we will see significant progress in treatment within the next five years or so?