Xcell Biosciences and Culture Biosciences have collaborated to enhance the data analysis and access capabilities for cell therapies under development or manufacture in the Xcellbio AVATAR Foundry system. The agreement will allow Xcellbio customers to incorporate Culture’s AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools to learn more from their cell therapies and to iteratively improve them.

Through this collaboration, scientists using the AVATAR Foundry system will gain access to Culture’s cloud-native analysis platform, enabling them to capture data generated during cell incubation — including temperature, oxygen and pH levels, and process details — and remotely monitor cell therapy performance metrics over time from one or more systems. Users will also be able to conduct detailed analyses, deploying AI and ML capabilities to hone their cell therapy development and manufacturing processes.

“Historically, too much of the cell therapy development process has relied on fixed procedures, when we know that cells from different patients behave differently and may need slight variations in metabolic conditions, growth time, and nutrient requirements for optimal performance. Through this collaboration with Culture Biosciences, we will be enabling a more tailored, precise, and even predictive approach to cell therapy development and manufacturing that could ultimately help lead to better outcomes for patients,” said James Lim, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Xcellbio.

Xcellbio offers the AVATAR platform for cell and gene therapy research and development. Its AVATAR Foundry system is a cGMP manufacturing platform that delivers novel capabilities for improving the potency of cell and gene therapies. Culture Biosciences has developed proprietary, cloud-native Console software to design and monitor experiments remotely, and to integrate and quickly analyse data in one place to support distributed teams.

Chris Williams, CEO, Culture Biosciences, commented, “By pairing our cloud-native Console analysis tools with the sophisticated capabilities of the AVATAR Foundry system, scientists will be able to fine-tune performance metrics for each cell therapy in real time as the cells are expanding. We believe this could be game-changing for the cell therapy field.”

In the future, Xcellbio plans to incorporate additional sensors in its AVATAR Foundry system to allow even more data to be collected and mined through Console software. This could provide novel layers of useful information to give cell therapy developers a more in-depth view of the treatments being produced.

“We are excited to team up with our colleagues at Culture Biosciences, adding their expertise in cloud computing, AI and data analysis to the critical capabilities we offer through the AVATAR platform. Cloud access and analysis will be especially useful as more of our customers expand their AVATAR Foundry installations and need to monitor cell therapies in many systems, often across multiple locations,” said Brian Feth, Co-Founder and CEO, Xcellbio.