Advancement Through Partnership: BD Collaborates with CGT Catapult on the PAT Consortium Project

Advances in cell and gene therapies mean that personalised cell or tissue based advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are becoming widely available to patients.
 

Collaboration is key to continuing these advances — from sharing information and improving processes, to reducing costs to drive further progress.
 

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult) brought together leading companies to help accelerate technology development and lower costs in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. This international consortium assessed multiple process analytical technologies (PAT) to drive advancement of an optimal CAR-T cell bioprocess and to improve safety, effectiveness, scalability and affordability.
 

A critical step in the PAT Consortium’s bioprocess analytics was the use of the BD FACSLyric^™ Flow Cytometer and a novel 12 colour antibody panel to monitor the phenotype of the T cells during and post bioprocessing   This crucial step determines the quality target product profile (QTPP) and critical quality attributes of the final T cell-based medicinal product.
 

BD was delighted to contribute to the consortium and sees the partnership as an opportunity to work with cell therapy developers to ultimately help make cell therapy products more affordable and accessible.

Why did CGT Catapult partner with BD?

BD’s leading expertise in flow cytometry played a crucial role in achieving the consortium’s objectives — specifically in helping develop and optimise a novel 12 colour T cell panel to characterise cells.

Hear from key experts at CGT Catapult about their experience partnering with BD

In their written testimonial, CGT Catapult share further insight into how BD supported the consortium, raising awareness of BD as trusted partners in the development and manufacture QC of cell therapy products.

As well as a more in-depth look at CGT Catapult and the cell and gene therapy field, the testimonial features:
 

• Hadi Mirmalek-Sani, PAT Consortium Project Manager, on where the idea for the consortium came from, its objectives, and why the consortium reached out to BD for participation
• Giuseppa Piras, Senior Scientist, on the importance of flow cytometry in cell therapy, the flow cytometry-related challenges during the manufacturing QC of cell and gene therapy, and how BD helped address them
• Nicolyn Thompson, Scientist, on the benefits of working with BD and the use of the BD FACSLyric^™ Flow Cytometer
   

Access the full testimonials
 

Learn more about the 12 colour flow cytometry panel used for process QC in the PAT Consortium

CGT Catapult published a white paper that reviews the development of the 12 colour antibody panel, created in collaboration with BD.
 

The BD FACSLyric^™ Flow Cytometer was used for acquisition and the BD FACSuite™ software was used for data analysis.
 

From three independent experiments, using three different healthy donors, the panel showed clear resolution of individual cell populations throughout the manufacturing process and consistent patterns of surface marker expression at each timepoint.
 

These were the findings:
 

• Showed that the panel was fit for purpose to apply to the PAT Consortium’s dataset¹
• Highlighted the panel’s reliable performance in identifying T cell phenotypes
• Supported the use of the panel for QC guidance in CAR-T cell processing

Read the article in full on the CGT Catapult website.
 

Find out more about how BD Biosciences can support you in the field of Cell therapy and CAR-T therapy development.