I-Corps: Microfluidic platform for cell characterization and modification

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将使尖端细胞疗法更实惠，更容易为更多的患者群体所接受。细胞疗法是治疗危及生命的疾病（如癌症和严重免疫缺陷）最有希望的疗法之一。虽然这些细胞疗法最近获得了FDA的批准，但它们仍然非常昂贵，单次治疗费用高达数十万美元。制造细胞疗法需要昂贵的试剂和设施以及高技能的劳动力，这推高了医疗成本，使许多最需要的患者无法获得细胞疗法。这个I-Corps项目旨在通过创新的低成本细胞处理技术彻底改变细胞治疗制造领域。这种方法可以有效地将正常细胞修饰成有效的细胞疗法，并分离出所需的细胞群用于质量控制。它得益于低成本的操作，并消除了昂贵的技术人员的需要。这项技术具有巨大的潜力，可以开创一个负担得起的细胞疗法和具有成本效益的医疗保健的新时代。这个I-Corps项目利用微流体平台，可以对细胞进行分类和工程化，对细胞活力和功能几乎没有影响。这种方法不依赖于昂贵和危险的方法，如病毒或电击，而是依赖于自然细胞对快速压缩的反应，使处理过的细胞吸收分子，这些分子可以将细胞转化为挽救生命的细胞疗法。这种摄取也可用于将标记物递送至细胞内部，以指示期望的或不期望的细胞性状，从而容易且快速地读出以进行质量控制。整个技术都安装在一个微流控芯片上，每秒可以处理超过10万个细胞。用于细胞分选的技术利用固有的细胞机械特性，并且不需要任何额外的化学或生物细胞修饰。该微流控平台可以执行细胞工程、细胞标记和细胞分选等通常极其复杂的任务，为细胞疗法的制造和处理提供高效、经济的解决方案，使其成为安全、高质量的治疗方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力评审标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will make cutting edge cell therapies more affordable and accessible for a larger patient population. Cell therapies are among the most promising treatments for life-threatening diseases, such as cancer and severe immunodeficiency. While these cell therapies have been recently FDA approved, they remain extremely expensive, with single treatment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Manufacturing cell therapies requires expensive reagents and facilities and highly skilled labor, which drives up healthcare costs and makes cell therapies unattainable for many patients in greatest need. This I-Corps project aims to revolutionize the field of cell therapy manufacturing with an innovatively low-cost cell processing technology. This approach can efficiently modify normal cells into potent cell therapies and isolate desired cell populations for quality control. It benefits from low cost operation and eliminates the need in expensive skilled personal. This technology has a great potential to usher in a new era of affordable cell therapies and cost-effective healthcare.This I-Corps project utilizes a microfluidic platform that can sort and engineer cells with little to no impact on cell viability and function. Instead of relying on expensive and dangerous methods such as viruses or electric shock, the approach relies on natural cell response to rapid compressions to cause the processed cells to uptake molecules that can turn cells into life-saving cell therapies. This uptake can also be used to deliver labels to the cell interior to indicate desirable or undesirable cell traits for an easy and rapid readout for quality control. The entire technology is housed on a microfluidic chip that can process over 100,000 cells per second. The technology for cell sorting makes use of inherent cell mechanical properties and does not require any additional chemical or biological cell modification. This microfluidic platform can perform tasks that are normally extremely complicated, such as cell engineering, cell labeling, and cell sorting, providing efficient and cost-effective solutions for both making cell therapies and processing them into safe, high-quality treatments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.