miFACTS: Microfluidic system for Flexible Automated Cell Transduction and Selection

细胞疗法有望成为一种全球通用的治疗重要疾病的方法，比如癌症。目前的疗法包括移除病人的白细胞（如t细胞），重新编程以对抗癌症，然后将它们重新引入病人体内。目前的细胞重编程技术效率非常低（例如低至3%），并且涉及复杂，不灵活的生产技术。我们提议的项目将细胞重编程和制造专业知识（来自Cell Therapy Catapult）与新颖的单细胞操作和微流体专业知识（来自Sphere Fluidics Limited）与细胞治疗制造和最终用户专业知识（来自cellular Therapeutics Ltd和GlaxoSmithKline）相结合。这个世界级的团队将构建、测试和演示一种新的细胞治疗生产微流体装置，该装置能够以更快速、高效和更低成本的方式灵活制造高质量的工程细胞。这将加速发现和改善新的、有价值的细胞疗法的生产，使英国公司在这一领域具有显著的领先地位，并提高世界各地患者医疗保健的质量。

Cell therapy promises to become a globally used approach to treat important diseases, such as cancer. Current regimes can involve removing a patient's white blood cells (e.g. T-cells), reprogramming them to fight cancer and then reintroducing them to the patient. Current cellular reprogramming techniques are very inefficient (e.g. as low as 3%) and involve complex, inflexible techniques for production. Our proposed project synergises cellular reprogramming and manufacturing expertise (from Cell Therapy Catapult) with novel, single cell manipulation and microfluidic expertise (from Sphere Fluidics Limited) with cell therapy manufacturing and end user expertise (from Cellular Therapeutics Ltd and GlaxoSmithKline). This world-class team will build, test and demonstrate a new cell therapy production microfluidic device that enables the flexible manufacture of high quality, engineered cells in a more rapid, efficient and less costly manner. This will accelerate discovery and improve production of new, valuable cell therapies - giving UK companies a significant lead in this area and improving the quality of patient healthcare across the world.