PhD students Kitana Kaiphanliam and Brenden Fraser-Hevlin are working on commercializing a bioreactor that can grow 25 times more valuable T cells in half the time than current technology.
Washington State University researchers hope that their tool for rapidly growing cancer-killing T cells can one day make a difference in fighting the disease.
Under the direction of Professor Bernard Van Wie, PhD students Kitana Kaiphanliam and Brenden Fraser-Hevlin are working on the commercialization of a bioreactor that can grow 25 times more valuable T cells in half the time than current technology.
They recently won a $ 50,000 grant through WSU’s first ever Cougar Cage competition to commercialize the technology.
They also took third place out of more than 100 teams at the University of Washington Dempsey Startup Competition 2021. The work was brought about by an EAGER or Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research Award from the National Science Foundation, which points to “high-risk high-payoff ”approaches for the large-scale production of therapeutic cells. Bill Davis of the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology at WSU is a co-investigator.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, with around 17 million new cases reported worldwide each year. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are the most common cancer treatments, but they often damage healthy tissue. Immunotherapy, on the other hand, uses the power of the body’s natural immune response and only targets cancer cells.
T cells are a type of white blood cell used in immunotherapy. The T cells are taken from the patient’s body, modified to specifically target cancer, expanded and grown to a higher density, and then re-injected into the patient to allow the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer. Current treatment, however, is limited because of the cost and time it takes to grow the cells.
“The cells take a long time to grow, the process is inefficient and, above all, so expensive,” said Fraser-Hevlin. “We’re trying to make this process more efficient, faster, and cheaper to create a more affordable option for patients.”
The technology the students want to market was originally developed by Van Wie at the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. Van Wie has developed a centrifugal bioreactor for the past four decades to rapidly densify and expand cells for tissue engineering and antibody production applications.
“I realized that this great device that could help people would stay in science unless someone in our group focused on the business aspects and the entrepreneurial guide to getting an idea to market,” said Kaiphanliam. “If you believe so much in a technology and want it to help people, you don’t want it to stay in an academic laboratory.”
As they continue their PhD studies, Kaiphanliam and Fraser-Hevlin develop a company, Ananta, to begin producing and commercializing the technology. In addition to the Cougar Cage competition, they took part in several WSU entrepreneur programs. Kaiphanliam, who received her bachelor’s degree from WSU, said the programs prepared her well for starting her start-up. They have also received grants from the WSU Commercialization Gap Fund and the Washington Research Foundation.
They are now working to build a microwave-sized version of the bioreactor that will make it more convenient for hospitals and researchers to use. They are also starting to test their prototype with bovine T cells and develop a process control system that will help them monitor the cells in real time as they grow in the reactor. The surveillance is intended to address a problem called cell depletion, in which T cells tend to wear out when stimulated by their immune response.
When they launch Ananta, Kaiphanliam says she had a lifelong interest in helping people and is excited about the opportunity to promote a new technology that could save lives. For his part, Fraser-Hevlin saw his father survive a cancer battle a decade ago and thought long and hard about how he could help people deal with the disease.
“This is an area that interests me,” he said. “With this project I was really able to get involved in developing something that is valuable and useful and that will hopefully help a lot of people.”
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