UNLOCKING NEXT-GENERATION CELL THERAPY THROUGH REAL-TIME CONTAMINATION DETECTION WITH PROPHESEE METAVISION® SENSING
Video Courtesy : Cambridge Consultants
Cell therapy is increasingly being considered to provide life-saving and life-changing treatment, and represents a wide potential of applications including treating cancer, autoimmune disease, infectious disease, improving a weakened immune system, and helping patients with neurological disorders. Cures are now available for some forms of leukemia and other cancers based on reprogramming the patient’s own cells. Manufacturing these therapies is a highly sophisticated process, but many steps are manual and labor intensive. As a result, a single dose of a cell therapy can cost on average $475,000.
A key aspect of this process is monitoring and testing samples. Each dose must be sterile to be safe, however standard sterility testing today is slow and can add major delays. Testing, via manually collected samples, requires a 7-14 day incubation period, extending the time the patient has to wait for treatment. A contamination detection resets the clock on the whole process, causing delays in getting personalized therapy to the patient and representing large financial risk to manufacturers.
Cambridge Consultants, a global product development and R&D provider, is working to improve the time and cost of quality control in cell therapy manufacturing using Prophesee Metavision sensor and AI models to detect, track and classify contaminants.
Their breakthrough PureSentry system is a fully automated, real-time contamination detection system which uses the speed and sensitivity of event-based vision to deliver intelligent cell therapy contamination monitoring, with real-time 24/7 feedback.
Microbial growth monitoring happens continuously and autonomously, cutting down required testing time from weeks to milliseconds! An early contamination detection resets the clock on the whole process after a few days of culture.
Image Courtesy : Cambridge Consultants
BESPOKE CELL THERAPY STIMULANT
Image Courtesy : Cambridge Consultants
PureSentry uses Metavision-enabled machine vision to track both human cells and contaminants. The precision and accuracy improvements provided by event-based vision allows tracking in a variety of conditions, including low illumination and high-flow rates. Standard detection is currently low resolution at the bacterial colony level; this higher resolution is able to detect at the single cell level.
One of the exhibits shared by Cambridge Consultants uses E.coli bacteria as a model contaminant. Under gentle flow conditions their rod morphology is clear and cartwheeling motion is observed. The Prophesee AI model can detect E.coli objects in empty media.
Gene therapy research is increasing exponentially. To, date the FDA has only approved 10 gene therapies, but as of last year 712 active clinical trials were underway. While these trials represent a significant completion time and fail-rate, analysts predict 170 gene therapies are likely to be approved and commercialized during the next decade.
The low data density and automation improvements provided by Metavision event-based vision represent opportunities to scale and grow the industry, ultimately resulting in more affordable and precise patient care. This breakthrough technique solves a significant challenge by enabling for the first time real-time, automated contamination detection, part of the key to unlocking cell and gene therapy mass deployment.
MEET THE CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS TEAM
Rae Freestone
Lead Laboratory Technician
George Barnett
Machine Learning Engineer
Josh Gibson
Technical Lead
James Hallinan
Business Developer
Matthew Jones
Project Manager
ABOUT CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS
Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Invent is one of the world’s leading product development and technology consultancy firms. In the last 60 years, they have grown into a global team of engineers, scientists, designers and consultants helping some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious start-ups to realize their technology-based aspirations. They have 6 offices supporting clients in North America, Asia and Europe, with 900 engineers, designers, scientists and consultants.
ABOUT PROPHESEE INVENTORS COMMUNITY
Since 2014, a network of researchers, start-ups and companies have shown incredible imagination and innovation using Prophesee’s neuromorphic vision technologies.
This has created an Event-Based Vision ecosystem of inventors sharing their work and ideas. Their creativity with Prophesee’s technologies inspires us.
We are gathering them here to inspire future inventors in turn, in the hope that, like the projects here, they create something new together and reveal the invisible.
