VISTA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GPB Scientific LLC announced that the NIH completed its review or its achievement of Phase I milestones and authorized Phase II funding under a $2.2M NIH STTR Award. The award by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health supports work by GPB Scientific, in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Princeton University, to scale up GPB Scientific’s microfluidic cell separation technology. GPB Scientific’s innovation displaces current centrifuge-based systems for selecting cells, such as isolating a patient’s own white blood cells from red cells and platelets to manufacture ground-breaking CAR-T cancer therapies.
In Phase I, GPB Scientific demonstrated the ability to process apheresis blood material and obtain >95% recovery of white cells, >99% removal of red cells, and >95% removal of platelets, with throughput of 300-500mL/hour. The system is a gentle, reagent- free, closed system that can enable automation of cell manufacturing for T-, stem- and other cell therapies.
Targeted cell and gene therapies are rapidly being developed, with three FDA-approved CAR-T therapies and further T-, stem- and other cell therapies aggressively being funded by the biopharmaceutical industry. However, barriers to broad deployment and patient access are driven by high cost and viability of robust manufacturing platforms. GPB Scientific’s innovation provides dramatically higher yield and purity of cells to enhance manufacturing these therapies, with potential to reduce process and infrastructure cost by $50-75K/dose, reduce production time by four days, and minimize operator/process variability that complicates manufacturing and causes failures.
GPB Scientific was also selected for the NIH’s 2018-2019 Commercialization Accelerator Program, as it is rapidly moving forward with strategic evaluation and development relationships with cell therapy pharmacos and systems suppliers.
ABOUT GPB Scientific: GPB Scientific is committed to transforming the processing of cells for groundbreaking gene and cell therapies, our objective is Getting People Better.
DISCLOSURE NOTICE: This release contains forward-looking information that is based on company management's current beliefs and expectations and are subject to currently unknown information, risks and circumstances. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R42CA228616. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
