Raman Spectroscopy Analysis to Improve the Validation of Cell Therapy Manufacturing Processes

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Emerging cellular therapies have the potential to both greatly improve the health of individualsand to reduce healthcare costs by curing diseases. For example, it has been established thata cellular transplant therapy can reverse and potentially cure type 1 diabetes. However, thereare far too few cadaveric donors available relative to the many thousands of Canadians whocould benefit from this therapy. Generating pancreatic islets (insulin-generating cells) fromcultured stem cells is an exciting development that could provide an essentially unlimitedsupply for transplantation into diabetic patients. It has already been demonstrated that thesecells can reverse diabetes in animal models, and a human clinical trial is currently underway.However, several challenges must be overcome to make this cure for diabetes a reality.Among them, improving the complex processes used to produce these cells is paramount.For example, we need technologies capable of non-invasively (and without contact)monitoring of the cultures so that the cells produced remain safe and effective. Our group hasshown that novel spectroscopic techniques can gather critical information using light scatteredby the cultured cells, tracking the critical developmental changes taking place as stem cellsbecome pancreatic cells. This project will advance this non-invasive technology so that it canbe used to assess and control the quality of stem cell-derived therapeutic cells destined fortransplantation. This will contribute to the development and approval of safe and efficacioustherapies with the potential of curing thousands of Canadians. While the first application willtarget diabetes, our technology could also be applied to many other cell therapies that targetdiseases such as cancer and heart disease cellular therapy.