Project description
An affordable cell engineering technology
Engineering immune cells to fight cancer has generated promising results, providing a therapeutic opportunity where chemotherapy fails. However, cell therapies are very expensive to manufacture, necessitating more cost-effective engineering methods. The mission of the EU-funded SOLUPORE project is to produce the next generation of cellular therapies at an improved cost. The SOLUPORE platform does not use viral vectors but a novel technology for delivering mRNA, DNA or proteins to primary T and NK cells, retaining high cell viability and functionality. The simplicity of the SOLUPORE method renders it user-friendly and applicable to the manufacture of immunotherapies.
Objective
There is encouraging news for cancer patients, a new treatment, cell immunotherapy, has been delivering spectacular
clinical results and is a game changer because it is an entirely new way of treating cancer. Cancer immunotherapy, in which
a patient’s own immune cells are ‘armed’ by cell engineering to target and kill cancer cells, gives levels of complete response
in patients. The first cell immunotherapy drug was approved in August 2017 at a price of $475,000 per treatment. To bring
these life-changing treatments to patients and relieve the European and global healthcare burden they must become
available at affordable costs. The one thing worse than failure is unaffordable success and the challenge with these
treatments is the complex and high-cost of manufacturing. Current cell engineering methods are very expensive to
manufacture. Avectas has developed Solupore, a cell engineering technology, which delivers cargo to cells and plays a
critical role in the manufacturing process. The technology works by temporarily making the cell membrane permeable and
allowing cargo into the cell. Crucially, cell health and functionality are preserved while there is a significant improvement on
the process time and costs. Avectas has demonstrated that the pilot system can successfully deliver clinically relevant cargo
to T cells. During this project, Avectas will scale and align Solupore to regulatory compliance enabling us to commercialise
it. The emerging and fast-growing cell immunotherapy market is set to be worth $20bn in 2020, with cell manufacturing
representing $5bn. Commercialisation of Solupore will take 1% of the €5bn market share by 2024 and will generate global
revenues for Avectas, building value for the company and creating highly skilled jobs which will result in a high-value,
knowledge-based EU company. There will be substantial European and global socio-economic impact on cancer patients
living longer, better quality lives.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
W23 F2H6 Kildare
Ireland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.