| Novel
Technology for Manufacturing 3D Tissues |
| TAP
is the lead partner in a consortium with
scientists from UCL's
(University College London, UK) Tissue Repair
and Engineering Centre and the Institute
of Ophthalmology, working on a project which
won funding in a Technology Strategy Board
collaborative R&D competition in Cell
Therapy. |
| The
three year RAFT project
(Rapid Automated Fabrication of Tissues)
aims to develop and commercialise novel
technology for rapid production of 3D tissues,
which have the potential to transform drug
discovery and regenerative medicine. |
| Automated
cell culture in shake flasks |
| Following
the success of our SelecT system for T-flasks,
we were approached to apply the technology
to automate suspension cultures in shake
flasks. TAP took the SelecT platform and
developed a novel, high capacity shaking
incubator, modified it to handle shake flasks
and centrifuge tubes and combined it with
a new software platform optimised for the
more complex scheduling tasks |
| Automated
protein concentration |
|
Following detailed discussions with a biologics
development group, TAP were commissioned
to create a novel automated protein purification
and concentration system. Specifically tailored
to their workflow requirements the system
automates parallel affinity purification
in combination with a novel automated concentration
module providing a fixed final volume of
purified, concentrated protein from 96 samples
every 24 hours. |
| GMP
validation |
| Scaling
up of adherent cell culture for autologous
cell therapies has been perceived as a major
bottleneck in many manufacturing strategies.
To address this, TAP has been working with
leading academic groups and cell therapy
companies to perform detailed risk assessments
and testing and to support validation of
the automation system for use in manufacturing.
|
| Scheduling
software for cell line optimisation experiments
|
| TAP
developed sophisticated software to manage
the scheduling and operation of an automated
cell line optimisation system. The scheduler
tracks many thousand clones through the
optimisation process, following rules for
selection and expansion based on real-time
data, to fully manage the process which
can last many weeks. Cell growth rate is
used to predict outcomes and plan consumable
usage days ahead, further reducing operator
workload. |
