Lakhesys: building the machine to make the medicines of tomorrow

Programme(s): H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
Topic(s): EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020 - SME instrument
Call for proposal: H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2
Funding Scheme: SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

Grant agreement ID: 850358

Project description
Making CAR-T-based treatments accessible to more patients with cancer
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T cells) are manufactured from patient’s own T cells and, as such, are engineered weapons against cancer, with theoretically limitless potential. However, the high cost of CAR-T-based treatments remains an inhibitive factor for their large-scale implementation in healthcare. The EU-funded Lakhesys project will introduce a highly innovative microfluidic chip that will fundamentally change the CAR-T industry, along with equipment to optimise its use. This tool will provide a significantly lower production cost, ensure the improvement of treatment quality and allow the increase of treatment volumes to the required levels. Lakhesys innovative system aspires to offer a unique European solution for life-changing therapies.

Objective
Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapies (‘CAR-T’) are ushering in an incredibly exciting era of using a patient’s own cells to cure their cancer. The prospect of using a patient’s own cells to cure their disease is theoretically limitless. However, with all of this excitement comes a shadow. The cost of these life-saving treatments is currently so prohibitive that it threatens to put extreme cost-pressure on healthcare providers globally in the years ahead.

Astraveus has developed a highly innovative microfluidic chip that can fundamentally change the CAR-T industry. This chip answers the need to lower production cost (by ~70%), improve treatment quality and allow upscaling of treatment volumes to the required levels. Astraveus has also developed equipment to optimize the use of these microfluidic chips. They have incorporated these technologies into a working prototype of an instrument called ‘Lakhesys’. This instrument allows for automated, standalone, end-to-end production of a CAR-T therapy.

The design, fabrication and validation of the microfluidic innovation is a real breakthrough in the ability to cheaply and accurately produce these treatments. The further step of incorporating these chips into a prototype system demonstrates the huge potential for automating CAR-T production. This phase-2 project will upgrade the supporting modules to turn this working prototype into a launch-ready product. It will also support the validation and industrialisation steps to bring this innovation to market.