GE Healthcare Life Sciences Launches Xuri™ Technology Family for Cell Therapy Manufacturing

GE Healthcare Life Sciences today launched Xuri™, a new technology family designed specifically to support and advance the field of cell therapy. The new technology family, in which the first product is the Xuri Cell Expansion System W25 for the manufacture of cellular immunotherapies in a clinical setting, will combine GE Healthcare’s capabilities in cellular science with the company’s expertise in the development of advanced tools for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals.

Cell therapy and regenerative medicine, the use of cells to replace damaged tissue or to treat disease, shows great promise for treating many life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s and age-related macular degeneration. The widespread adoption of these therapies will require the development of robust, scalable manufacturing tools and workflows to generate sufficient, high quality cells for infusion into patients. With an estimated 2,500 on-going cell therapy and regenerative medicine clinical trials worldwide¹, many research groups are now looking at how to move from small-scale expansion of cells to a cost-effective, industrialized process.

GE Healthcare’s new Xuri Cell Expansion System W25 is a functionally closed, automated system, specifically designed to be suitable for the requirements of scaling-out cell therapies in a clinical setting. The system is equipped with dedicated software applications to make it suitable for a regulated manufacturing environment and has been validated for T-cell growth. The Xuri W25 builds on the GE Healthcare’s WAVE Bioreactor™ technology which is widely used in the development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals globally.

Eric Roman, General Manager of Research & Applied Markets, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, commented, “Through our scale and innovation, we are committed to addressing the significant challenges that remain in moving from highly promising experimental cell therapies to widely available and affordable treatments. We have an extensive research program, working with leaders in the field such as the Karolinska University Hospital, to develop tailored technologies and workflows. The focus of our Xuri technology family is to enable the safe, reliable and efficient progress of cell therapies from clinical development to commercialization.”

¹ Alliance for Regenerative Medicine 2013 Annual Report