MANUCYTE | Self-learning modular manufacturing platform for flexible, patient-specific cell production

Currently, personalised cell cultivation is only carried out through laboratory-scale manual processing. This makes the process highly dependent on human interaction, reducing accuracy and reproducibility. To overcome these issues and make the patient-specific cultivation of cells available for a wide range of applications, ManuCyte will develop this technology to boost the efficiency of personalised cell cultivation, with a view to quality, throughput and costs. Key SMEs and research institutes are at the root of the project consortium and will incorporate their specialisms in their respective fields into the ManuCyte project. Examples of these fields are: liquid handling; cell imaging; cell culturing; software development and automation. According to project manager Ursula Rauschecker, it is only this close cooperation between organisations operating in different sectors and these various companies pooling their technologies which enable such multidisciplinary projects to get off the ground and be carried through to successful completion. This objective will be obtained by combining several advanced technologies, such as: • A modular and scalable plug-in concept for the setup of cell production platforms. • Cleanroom and sterilisation policies to keep cell cultures free from the risk of cross-contamination. • A micro-fluidic component which provides cell culture medium specifically customised for each cell culture. • Bioreactors capable of highly automated processes, as well as the associated incubation component. • Inline monitoring (monitoring while the process is ongoing) to enable the evaluation of cell status within the production process through optical and biochemical measurement. • MES (Manufacturing Execution System) with LIMS (Laboratory Information and Management System) functionalities for control of the automation platform, including a self-learning knowledge-based cell behaviour model and advanced cell process control functionalities for self-optimisation of cell cultivation processes.