Automated cardiac stem cell production

The French start-up Cellprothera has shown that cardiac cells from patients who have suffered a serious cardiovascular event can be regenerated by means of a stem cell transplant. Patients whose lives are in danger can be saved by injecting a sufficient quantity of cardiac stem cells into the myocardium.
In order to obtain a significant quantity of stem cells, these need to be harvested from the patient and then isolated, multiplied, and injected back into the heart. In 2010, Bertin Technologies developed an instrument to automate production of these stem cells.
Drawing on existing technology, including a CO2 incubator that makes it possible to keep temperature and gas concentrations at suitable levels for growing eukaryotic cells, Bertin has developed an agitator from scratch. This in turn is capable of keeping cells in suspension – just like in blood – when positioned inside the incubator. This process has therefore enabled cells to multiply without any differentiation.

Via a consortium financed by France’s Banque Publique d’Investissement (Bank for Public Investment – BPI), Bertin Technologies then worked on designing a second version of this instrument, which also incorporated an automatic centrifuge system. This made it possible to transfer the multiplied cells to the vial used to inject them back into the patient’s heart. During this second phase of the project, Bertin Technologies also developed the IT capability needed to control the various elements of the process – taking due account of the traceability demanded by GMP.
Large-scale clinical trials are currently taking place with this second-generation machine.
The ultimate objective is to provide Cellprothera with the machines for the final phase of the clinical trial and then provide the ones to be installed at the various treatment centres, with the potential to benefit over a million patients.