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Acoustophoresis is a fancy term for using sound waves to move tiny particles or cells around in a liquid. Think of it like using sound to push around small objects in water. The sound waves create forces that can push these particles or cells depending on size, density and shape. These techniques can be exploited in many areas like biology, medicine, or microfluidics. In other words, acoustophoresis harnesses the power of sound to manipulate microorganisms, such as mammalian cells.
While over the past two decades, this technique has proven to be successful and efficient to allow cell separation and washing, required to manufacture cell therapies, very few players have tried to leverage this cutting edge techniques upstream to foster cell expansion or cell modification, crucial and complex steps to manufacture cell and gene therapies.
At Kolibri, we leverage acoustophoresis to suspend mammalian cells in media without physical contact. By adjusting the frequency and intensity of the acoustic waves, we can control the position and movement of cells, therefore controlling in real time cell density. We believe that with real time and controlled stress over cells, Kolibri holds the potential to unlock major biomanufacturing bottlenecks.
Whilst cell agnostic, at Kolibri, we are starting with gene therapies (adeno-associated virus) that are presenting major manufacturing challenges, leading to production costs that can go over 1 million dollars per patient. As such, we have developped a proof of concept on both adherent and suspension HEK293 cell lines, showing improved transfection efficiency and increased titers using acoustics against standard methods.
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