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 individuals**and to reduce healthcare costs by curing diseases. For example, it has been established that**a cellular transplant therapy can reverse and potentially cure type 1 diabetes. However, there**are far too few cadaveric donors available relative to the many thousands of Canadians who**could benefit from this therapy. Generating pancreatic islets (insulin-generating cells) from**cultured stem cells is an exciting development that could provide an essentially unlimited**supply for transplantation into diabetic patients. It has already been demonstrated that these**cells 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 has**shown that novel spectroscopic techniques can gather critical information using light scattered**by the cultured cells, tracking the critical developmental changes taking place as stem cells**become pancreatic cells. This project will advance this non-invasive technology so that it can**be used to assess and control the quality of stem cell-derived therapeutic cells destined for**transplantation. This will contribute to the development and approval of safe and efficacious**therapies with the potential of curing thousands of Canadians. While the first application will**target diabetes, our technology could also be applied to many other cell therapies that target**diseases such as cancer and heart disease cellular therapy.