Remembrane’s founders have been working for many years on membrane lipid profiles of in-vitro culture, and they have discovered that current cultured cells do not represent an optimal situation for mimicking in-vivo membrane environment. With his PhD thesis in Cell Biology, ‘Membrane lipidomics: the reorganization of fatty acids as a biomarker of cell condition’ (2006-08), Dr. Alexandros Chatgilialoglu, CEO and co-founder of Remembrane, condensed a decade of research in the realisation of a disruptive concept and foundation of the company: Remembrane has started to design and commercialise tailored lipid supplements, called Refeed, for in-vitro applications: such supplements were found to be successful in preserving a lipid profile almost identical to that of their in-vivo counterparts. Refeed use is quite simple: supplements are added to the growth medium as cell feeders, able to develop membranes that mimic realistic membrane environments or create personalised membrane phenotypes. Being Refeed ethanol-based lipid solutions, solubility and oxidative stress generation issues disappear, giving to the Refeed technology a great advantage over competition.
Between 1st January 2017 and 30th April 2017, Remembrane undertook a full feasibility study of its Refeed business project, planned the strategy for its scale up and commercialization, and contacted many stakeholders in the biotechnology industry to assess the technical and economic viability of its product.
The first result was the identification of the Cell Therapy industry as the most appealing market sector for Refeed, given the market condition and the possibility of fine-tuning the Refeed supplement for each therapy under development: in the Cell Therapy industry Refeed can be highly competitive, the market itself is boosting, and the players in the field are easier to be reached, since they are often medium-size enterprises, instead of big pharma companies as it is in the vaccine market, for instance. Another important result was the recognition that, as a supplier of cell therapy companies, each with their own specific needs, Remembrane will need flexible scale-up capabilities for the Refeed production, and a GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) compliant production process. This led to the redefinition of a few objectives of the feasibility assessment. During Phase 1 project a great effort was made by Remembrane to identify preliminary features and potential stakeholders to fully engineer the automated production line for Refeed, and the steps required for the GMP compliance were mapped.
