Boosting Yield and Preserving Quality: Increasing Production of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Applications

摘要

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are promising starting materials for several clinical and industrial applications in cell therapy production, drug discovery, and in vitro screening. But as I learned from Maxime Feyeux (cofounder and chief science officer of TreeFrog Therapeutics in Bordeaux, France), such cells are a relatively new option in the toolbox of cell therapy developers. Advanced-therapy products can require controlled proliferation and differentiation of millions or even billions ofiPSCs depending on the clinical indication, he pointed out, yet culture methods and technologies for their stable mass production remain in early development stages (1,2). Thus, drug developers working with iPSCs today must choose between scaling out production using stacks of two-dimensional (2D) culture vessels or scaling up to three-dimensional (3D) bioreactors.