Project description
A step up for cell therapy manufacturing
There is a shortage of personalised cell therapeutics, such as CAR-T therapies. Globally, production levels only reach thousands of doses annually, hindering accessibility for patients in need. In response, an Austrian deep-tech company embarked on a project to scale up manufacturing capacity to hundreds of thousands of doses, cost-effectively and safely. The EU-funded Sarcura project will leverage automation, integration, miniaturisation, and modularity. Its innovative machine platform integrates advanced semiconductor technologies and microfluidic liquid processing systems. By providing comprehensive monitoring of cell count, viability, phenotype characterisation, it aims to achieve a 100-fold increase in cell therapy production. Overall, the project envisions an autonomous, AI-driven manufacturing system.
Objective
Sarcura GmbH, an Austrian deep-tech company founded in November 2019, will develop and market a machine platform for the industrial GMP manufacturing of personalised cell therapeutics, such as CAR-T therapies.
We will contribute to scale the global cell therapy manufacturing capacity of these lifesaving treatments from currently thousands of doses per year to hundreds of thousands of doses, cost effective and safe for all patients. Sarcura envisions to transform existing manufacturing paradigms by using leading-edge semiconductor technologies (such as integrated photonics) embedded in microfluidic liquid processing systems to bring bioprocess control to cellular level.
We believe that only by bringing together automation, integration (of additional functionality), miniaturization, and modularity we can achieve the required 100-fold increase in manufacturing capacity the cell therapy industry requires
Our initial focus is the development of a GMP ready, fully automated, industrial cell isolation device for the manufacturing of cell therapies. The device will include all necessary processing steps to handle the typical starting material of clinical cell therapy as well as provide integrated process analytics and quality control such as cell count, viability, phenotype characterization and other analytics
After launching the first single unit operation device for the Cell Isolation, further devices performing the Formulation, Gene Transfer and Expansion followed by an integrated end-to-end device will be developed. Finally, we aim to market an autonomous, self-optimising manufacturing system based on real-time manufacturing optimisation via AI driven (artificial intelligence) predictive process control.
Our product offer will include (a) desktop instruments, (b) single-use microfluidic cartridges, and (c) software and algorithms.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineeringgene therapy
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologycells technologies
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.2 - European innovation ecosystems Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
3400 Klosterneuburg
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.