NextCell Pharma AB announced that it, in cooperation with the consortium members: MyCellHub, SEFA and Scinus Cell Expansion, now officially has kicked-off the earlier announced Eurostars project. The Eurostars project Bioscale will focus on using a novel cell expansion system developed by Scinus Cell Expansion, to further test, develop and validate the involved bioprocesses used in the production of NextCell's drug candidate ProTrans™ (ProTrans).
The Eurostars programme supports innovative international projects led by R&D-performing SMEs and is co-funded by the Eurostars partner states and the EU (through Horizon 2020). In August, NextCell announced that together with three other partners it has been awarded the Eurostars project Bioscale (projectnumber E!114513). The project will run from 2020-2023 and in late October a kick-off meeting was held with all the project menbers NextCell, MyCellHub, SEFA och SCINUS Cell Expansion. NextCell has been granted €470,000 (approximately SEK 5 Million) and will cover additionally €470,000 with own contributions. This means NextCell will be participating with a total budget of €940,398. Money is allocated for further development of production methods of ProTrans and this grant is an opportunity to finance the implementation of production in a large-scale environment. The Bioscale project focuses on the stem cell expansion technology, for cost-efficient cell culture. The project will use NextCell's drug candidate ProTrans to test and validate the capabilities of the SCINUS bioreactor to provide a method for cost-efficient cell therapy production. For NextCell specifically this grant means that it will get the opportunity to, in a collaboration with other companies and with use of their competence, work on the further development and optimization of the bioprocesses involved in the production of its drug Candidate ProTrans. NextCell will integrate assays into the SCINUS workflow to optimise production of ProTrans and compare it to 2D culture. Proper planning, testing, validation and optimization of production methods will be key for taking ProTrans to the future large scale `off-the-shelf' production.