Biotechnology Report: WhiteLab Genomics and the ART-TG in Genomic Therapies Collaborate on AI for Gene Therapy Bioproduction

As part of this collaboration, teams from the Accelerator for Technological Research in Genomic Therapies (ART-TG, Inserm US35) and WhiteLab Genomics will use the WhiteLab Genomics platform to generate a database specific to the bioproduction of lentiviral vectors, which will be used to identify the parameters allowing for a significant increase in vector quality as well as their production yields, and to reduce the production costs.

Cell and gene therapy is a new biomedical approach that can treat a growing number of genetic and acquired diseases such as cancer. To keep up with their growth, the pharmaceutical manufacturing of these Advanced Medicinal Therapies needs to accelerate in terms of standardization and process control. Because purifying lentiviral vectors remains complex and at critical capacity, the partnership is focused on manufacturing lentiviral vectors, which are used in many gene therapies approaches, including the manufacture of CAR-T cells.

The teams will utilize AI to analyze information from multiple sources to optimize existing processes and develop new ones. The approach used with the lentiviral vectors will apply to various bioproducts.

This initiative is made possible due to funding from the Ile de France Region, which supports bioproduction efforts as part of its Ile-de-France Leader Bioproduction scheme, which was launched at the end of 2020.