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11 Sep 2024
US startup aiming to automate a typically labor-intensive process with laser-based cell management.
Cellino Biotech, the Harvard University spin-off that won SPIE’s Startup Challenge back in 2017, has been selected by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to lead a $25 million project.
The money will support a five-year effort to scale up and automate the production of so-called pluripotent stem cells, which promise to revolutionize patient-specific healthcare through regenerative medicine.
Cellino’s approach fuses expertise in stem cell biology, laser physics, and machine learning to scale up the cell production process so that it can be offered to far more people than is currently possible.
The firm’s technology platform combines label-free imaging and high-speed laser editing with machine learning to automate cell reprogramming, expansion, and differentiation in a closed cassette format, potentially enabling thousands of patient samples to be processed in parallel at a single site.
If the approach can be replicated at scale, it could transform new treatments for debilitating conditions including Parkinson’s, diabetes, and heart disease, and perhaps even spinal cord injuries and age-related macular degeneration.
Autonomous process
Nabiha Saklayen, the firm’s CEO and co-founder, said in response to the award: “At Cellino, we are actively building the industry-leading AI-driven biomanufacturing technology that personalizes cells, tissues, and organs for all, revolutionizing the treatment landscape for humanity’s most burdensome diseases.
“This support from ARPA-H will enable us to accelerate our innovation pace to bring potentially curative cell therapies to patients across the nation and beyond.”
In a separate announcement, ARPA-H added: “[The] NExt-generation Biomanufacturing ULtra-scalable Approach (NEBULA) project seeks to develop a more affordable and accessible method to manufacture personalized cell therapies using an individual’s own cells for the treatment of chronic or degenerative diseases.
“While current methods to manufacture cell therapies are time- and cost-intensive, Cellino’s modular biomanufacturing approach using a patient’s stem cells will yield more of the desired cell types while reducing the manufacturing footprint and number of expert personnel required, thus creating more affordable therapies overall.”
The autonomous process represents ARPA-H’s first investment aimed at boosting the domestic production capability and capacity of cellular therapies.
If successful, NEBULA should enable more healthcare facilities to generate cell-based therapies as and when they are needed, reducing dependence on specialist manufacturing facilities.
“Improvements in manufacturing could translate to faster drug development and more affordable and accessible new treatments for millions of Americans with chronic and disabling diseases,” ARPA-H said.
‘Your cells; your cure’
Cellino, which followed up its SPIE Startup Challenge win with a $16 million round of seed financing supported by Khosla Ventures, among others, in early 2021 and a Bayer-backed $80 million series A venture round a year later, was also a semi-finalist in last year’s “ARPA-H Dash” competition.
According to the ARPA-H web page detailing NEBULA, the effort will aim to create a compact, “cells made in a box” cell expansion platform to produce autologous cell-based therapies.
“The project aims to unlock personalized, affordable regenerative medicine treatments for the diverse US population via an autonomous biomanufacturing system scaling the production of personalized induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs),” it states.
“If successful, the project can lay the foundation for broader innovation and access to treatment for diseases like Parkinson’s, heart failure, spinal cord injury, and age-related macular degeneration, among other conditions.”
Cellino CTO and co-founder Matthias Wagner, who is the principal investigator for NEBULA, added: “This funding empowers us to unlock the potential of regenerative medicine by harnessing cutting-edge advancements in physics, cell therapy technologies, and artificial intelligence.
“Our approach is poised to significantly advance the scalability of high-precision biomanufacturing and make ‘Your cells, your cure’ a reality for millions of patients.”
Cellino corporate video explainer with CEO Nabiha Saklayen:
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