The collaboration with Nucleus Biologics will provide transparent and scalable manufacture of custom cell culture media, says Cytiva.

Under the terms of the deal, Cytiva and cell culture firm Nucleus Biologics have partnered to develop custom media formulation and fulfillment solutions for the cell and gene therapy (CGT) space.

Cytiva customers will be able to formulate their own custom cell culture media through Xuri Media AI Guide, which is based on Nucelus’ NB-AIR platform. Additionally, clients can configure their media using Xuri Media Designer System, based on Nucleus’ NB-Lux platform.

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“The Xuri Media AI Guide instantly canvases peer reviewed and community research to recommend components incorporating a novel neural network to create different formulations,” a spokesperson for Cytiva told BioProcess Insider.

“The platform takes into account the specific cell types and the critical quality attributes desired such as proliferation or cytotoxicity and provides customers with options for testing. Once a formula is decided, the customer owns the IP and can easily scale as needed in the Xuri Media Designer System.”

According to Cytiva, access to these platforms can drive the development of cellular therapies by creating custom cell media available at an early stage and simplifying downstream scale up, which is critical to bringing CGTs to market.

“It complements Cytiva’s end-to-end manufacturing workflow and provides automated web-based tools that expedite the end-to-end process of media formulation and development,” said Cytiva.

Shift in cell therapy manufacturing

Cytiva says CGT manufacturers have typically had to rely on off-the-shelf cell culture media. However, the firm says a paradigm shift in cell therapy manufacturing is underway through the ownership of formulas and having access to a scalable custom media supply.

“Historically, researchers have relied on “off-the-shelf” cell culture media. This is a one size fits all model that does not take into account the highly custom nature of cell therapies and in many cases overlooks the special growth requirements of cellular subsets. Now, we are providing our customers with the ability to develop and own a formula created for a specific therapy,” Cytiva told us.