Selling cell thawing: Medcision launches early adopter scheme to push tech
The idea is to make Thawstar – Medcision’s thawing technology that is designed to precisely control the preparation of frozen cell therapies – available to 30 companies and institutions during of early stage clinical trials.
According to Medcision, eliminating variability in thawing times, thereby improving the quality and comparability of clinical data.
Samuel Kent, chief commercial officer, told us "we are putting Thawstar cell thawing system into the hands of companies and investigators looking to de-risk thawing of cell therapies in clinical trials. By making this technology readily available, for free, we are contributing to the advancement of clinical trial successes which can be negatively impacted by variations in sample handling."
Kent added that: "We are confident that once users see first-hand the consistency and reproducible outcomes experienced with Thawstar they will evaluate all their non-standardized processes and will consider using MedCision’s thawing products going forward."
Thawing tech market heats up
Thawing is a hot topic for cell therapy developers. Most biopharmaceutical products are sensitive to temperature changes, but personalized cell therapies are particularly susceptible.
As a result cell therapies are usually frozen at the manufacturing facility before being shipped to the clinic for administration back to the patient.
Demand for thawing technologies has increased prompting the emergence of firm’s like Medcision, which was set up by laboratory tools developer Biocision last September.
Rivals like Asymptote have also recognized the surge in demand. In November the UK-firm launched CellSeal, a cell thawing system developed in collaboration with Cook Regenetec, a bioprocessing services firm spun-out of medical device maker Cook Medical.
Other firms like Sartorius are developing technologies to avoid potential problems during freezing and thawing operations.
