64x bio says a new cell screening technology has the potential to make viral vector production more efficient.

The San Francisco-headquartered biotechnology’s “VectorSelect” platform is a high throughput screening technology designed to help viral manufacturers identify high yield production cell lines.

64x bio says the system’s key feature is “genetic barcoding,” which links information on viral vector productivity to the parent cell allowing users to screen millions of candidate production cell lines at once.

Image: iStock/Natali_Mis

The aim is to help firms optimize production cell lines to increase yields, which is a major problem for vaccine developers according to CEO Lex Rovner.

“Engineering purpose-built cell lines is essential to solving the manufacturing bottleneck. Viruses are a product of cellular gene expression, so there is no reason their production cannot be systematized in the same way antibody and enzyme production has been.”

Cost savings

This was echoed by co-founder George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

He pointed out that, in nature, cells have evolved to minimize virus production and finding rare mutants that do make lots of viruses is difficult.

The VectorSelect platform’s ability to screen many cells at the same time differs from current methods that measure yield from individual cells one at a time in multiwell plates should reduce costs according to 64x bio.

In addition to vector production, the cell screening technology has application in cell and gene therapy development.

Oncolytics

64x Bio – which went public with details of the platform last week – recently raised $4.5 million in a seed funding round led by First Round Capital, Fifty Years, and Refactor Capital.

The firm is one of 19 start-ups with its foundations at George Church’s laboratory at Harvard in recent years.

In addition to helping biopharmaceutical companies improves cell line screening, 64x also has plans to grow into broader biologics markets such as vaccines and oncolytic therapies.