z-Movi cell screening and sorting platform

Project Information

LUMICKS

Grant agreement ID: 961442

DOI

10.3030/961442

Project closed

EC signature date 16 September 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 September 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 2 875 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 012 500,00

Coordinated by

LUMICKS CA BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LUMICKS (z-Movi cell screening and sorting platform)

Reporting period: 2021-10-01 to 2022-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Cancer remains one of the most important healthcare challenges of the coming decades. Statistics from 2018 show there were 18.1 million new cases worldwide and 9.5 million cancer-related deaths. Breakthrough discoveries have led to the development of highly promising immune therapies which use the patients own immune system to fight the cancer. This can be done, for example, by treating with compounds which release the breaks on the immune system, by treatment with specifically tailored immune cells or by developing special linkers that link the patient’s immune cells to the target tumor cells.

Biotech and pharmaceutical companies are investing billions in the development of new immune therapies and there is a tremendous need for improved ways to filter out those that work from those that do not. At the same time university researchers keep developing new ways to leverage the immune system to improve human lives.

Current methods for finding the best immune cells and for testing whether a change is beneficial or not are often slow or lead to the wrong predictions when compared to clinical outcomes. LUMICKS has developed technology to analyze and separate cells based on binding strength. This Horizon 2020 Grant has contributed to the development of the z-Movi® cell avidity analyser by LUMICKS. The z-Movi® is a unique instrument that directly measures the avidity between immune cells and their targets, enabling biotech, Pharma companies and academics to identify the most potent cells or immunotherapeutic compounds.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

LUMICKS has developed the z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer, a device designed to measure the binding strength (binding avidity) of immune cells to their tumor target cells. Grant number 961442 has contributed to funding the development of this first-generation product. The funding has contributed to turning the first prototype into a full commercial product. Developments supported by the grant include a fluorescence imaging module, improved fluidics, enhanced performance of the acoustic chips and greatly improved software for instrument control, image processing and data analysis. We have also done new assay development and have optimised cell culturing protocols and chemistry to expand the applications of the technology.

We are excited that many customers in industry and academia are using our technology on a daily basis in the development of the immune therapy products of the future. LUMICKS will continue to develop cell avidity technology to advance science and improve human health.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Together with our collaborators and customers we have demonstrated that binding avidity is an extremely valuable new biomarker in the field of immunology, and especially immune-oncology. We have launched an avidity analyzer and demonstrated that the instrument yields highly reproducible measurements of cell binding strength that correlate strongly to relevant functional parameters. Since the launch of the z-Movi® product this has already led to 8 scientific publications with many more currently under review. We will continue to improve methods and systems to measure and use cell avidity. These technologies can greatly accelerate development of novel immune therapies leading to huge cost savings in drug development and to an overall improvement of human health.

Cell Avidity Analysis method

z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer