New Electrofusion Devices for the Improved Generation of Dendritic Cell-tumour Cell Hybrids

摘要

Hybrids of two different cell types are of particular interest for a couple of applications (e.g. hybridoma cells for the production of monoclonal antibodies). In recent years, cancer immunotherapy using hybrid from antigen-presenting cells (especially dendritic cells) and tumour cells has been shown to efficiently induce anti-tumour immune responses. However, the available processes for generating such hybrids by chemically induced or electro-fusion are inefficient. Therefore, the clinical application of this technology is severely limited. In this study, we try to overcome poor fusion efficiencies and low yield of viable hybrids by an alternating arrangement of the fusion partners inside the fusion chamber, thus avoiding homologous fusion events.Two different devices have been developed using either microfluidics or micropatterning for cell arrangement introducing a new and reliable electrofusion procedure. Clinical requirements have been considered throughout process development and both approaches can be dimensioned to produce a sufficient amount of hybrid cells at once.