Project description
Bringing affordable cell therapy to the world
In the fight against diseases such as cancer or diabetes, cell therapy has emerged as a groundbreaking new treatment. Cell therapy involves injecting patients with cells – occasionally modified – specific to the illness in question. The main obstacles to widespread adoption and treatment are cost and availability due to the infrastructure and specialists required. Overcoming these obstacles, UK-based Aglaris has developed the first fully-autonomous cell culture platform. Having proved the platform's efficacy, the EU-funded Facer project seeks to finalise the product and secure partnerships to bring it to a wider market. This innovative solution will offer affordable cell therapy and help patients worldwide in fighting severe and previously incurable diseases.
Objective
Cell therapy has shown promising results for treating and curing a large range of diseases, from cancer to diabetes. The principles of cell therapy are easy to describe: cells (possibly modified) are injected into patients. Cell therapy is now a reality in Europe: in August 2018 the first two treatments for patients with blood cancer were approved; more of them are about to successfully conclude the approval path. What hinders the large-scale uptake of cell therapy is its costs: culturing enough cells of high quality requires specialised personnel and infrastructure, which only a few centres can afford. The market asks for a scalable cell culture platform that can produce large quantities of high quality cells at much lower costs than done nowadays. To address this need, we have developed the Facer – the first fully-autonomous cell culture platform. The Facer can manufacture billions of high-quality cells starting from the small quantity (about 500,000 cells) of a tissue biopsy without the need of human intervention, thanks to a unique patented iterative process. Our product is at TRL 7; its performances, in terms of quality and costs, are superior to any competitor commercially available. We have developed the Facer over the course of 5 years thanks to cash investments of over €3 million. In the Phase 2 project we will finalise the product, perform a validation with external partners, prepare the product for CE marking (our product is not a medical device), and find a distributor and a launching customer. We will initially tackle the European market to then expand globally once that the local regulatory barriers are overcome. In 2024, after 5 years from the first sale, our turnover will surpass the €60 million and our EBITDA will be over €36 million. Our innovation can enable affordable cell therapies at a large scale and change the life of millions of patients who suffer from diseases that have been deemed 'incurable' so far.
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. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine endocrinology diabetes
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences medical biotechnology cells technologies
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme -
H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
See all projects funded under this programme -
H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
See all projects funded under this callCoordinator
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
SG1 2FX Stevenage
United Kingdom
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.