The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult), an independent innovation and technology organisation specialising in the advancement of the cell and gene therapy industry, and Plurify, a company recently spun out from the CGT Catapult and Deep Science Ventures following a venture creation, have received over £340,000 funding from Innovate UK as part of the Transforming Medicines Manufacturing Programme.
The project will develop technology that improves the purity of cell therapies, with the aim of making these therapies safer, more efficacious and less costly to produce.
During the production of cell therapies, unwanted cell types can form in the product which can impact the effectiveness of the treatment or, in the worst cases, can cause the patient harm. As the existing approaches to remove these impurities are not fully effective or scalable, this presents a barrier to the development and use of cell therapies.
With this funding, Plurify and the CGT Catapult will develop and test a technology that removes residual cells from cell therapy products during their production and without the need for isolating and sorting the cells. The collaborators aim to work with cell therapy developers and manufacturers to apply the technology to their production processes, making them more efficient, reducing production cost and leading to safer products.
Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive of the CGT Catapult, said: “Plurify’s innovative technology and expertise could overcome existing challenges in the development of cell therapies. Through working with this exciting organisation to create a scalable technology that improves the safety and efficacy of these products, we aim to help more therapies progress to market and become available to patients.”
Djordje Djordjevic, Co-Founder and CEO of Plurify, said: “We are very grateful to Innovate UK for awarding us this grant, which is helping us develop and apply our novel purification technology in industrially relevant settings. It’s wonderful that we can simultaneously deepen our collaboration with the CGT Catapult, tapping into their depth of expertise and ensuring our strategic alignment with the realities of UK’s cell and gene therapy industry.
“We are very excited for the outcomes of this project which will bring a new solution to cell therapy manufacturers to ultimately get more next-generation therapies to the patients that need them.”
