Who We Are
I work for Invetech as Chief Scientist. Invetech is a design and engineering company with over 30 years of experience creating solutions for in vitro diagnostics, and since 2003 we have also been developing solutions in the cell therapy manufacturing space.
Our mission is to push the boundaries of what’s possible in health and life sciences. We draw a great deal of inspiration from our clients’ groundbreaking innovations, which motivates us to collaborate closely with them and drive significant advancements in human health. This commitment to partnership is crucial as we navigate the complexities of healthcare technology, particularly as it applies to the cell therapy space.
The Need for Innovation in Cell Therapy
The unique cell therapies being designed today — and increasingly coming to market — require innovative thinking and collaboration to meet future demand and expand patient access. Many of these therapies currently depend on manual processes, so scaling up means thinking outside the box and finding creative ways to automate manufacturing steps. Invetech is one of the partners that can help clients work through and address these bottlenecks.
Bridging Diagnostics and Cell Therapy
One of our key strengths is our combined experience in both in vitro diagnostics and cell therapy. We’ve seen significant crossover between these two segments, which allows us to pull expertise from our engineers’ past project experience across both areas to better serve our clients.
Several capabilities from our diagnostics work translate directly to bespoke cell therapy manufacturing, including:
- AI and machine learning, which we’ve already implemented in past diagnostics projects
- Contract manufacturing
- Consumable development, cartridge design, and prototype delivery
- Microfluidics
A lot of these technological solutions can be pulled in and applied to cell therapy manufacturing.
Human-Centered Design
As we approach cell therapy manufacturing solutions, our innovations lab brings genuine human-centered research and design to the table. We don’t just deliver equipment built to spec — we carefully consider how the operator will interact with the equipment and how it will be positioned within the manufacturing facility.
Our Range of Automation Solutions
For cell therapy automation, we offer everything from off-the-shelf, end-to-end closed and scalable systems to configurable technology and fully customized solutions. Wherever you are in your automation journey, and whatever level of automation you need, we can create a fit-for-purpose solution. We also have experience designing single-use consumables in parallel with the instruments they’re built to work with.
Our solutions generally fall into several categories:
End-to-end closed scalable automation. This means automating existing unit operations and connecting them so you have a fully automated solution from start to finish. We can save time and cost by incorporating off-the-shelf modules we’ve already developed — or, if that’s all you need, you can use those modules on their own.
Off-the-shelf solutions, such as our counterflow centrifuge, Chorus.
Configurable technology, where we base future developments on past ones so things don’t need to be built from scratch. This applies to our fill-and-finish and formulation-and-fill solutions, among others.
Fully customized solutions for clients with unique therapies that have no existing automation pathway. Here we rely on the broad expertise of our engineers and the depth of insight from our project history to deliver a tailored solution.
Consumable Development
We can also provide consumable development alongside the development of an instrument or manufacturing technology. Drawing on our experience in both diagnostic and cell therapy consumables, we deliver standard and custom consumable technologies involving tubes, bags, and similar components.
Our Approach: Rapid Iteration
One thing I’d really like to highlight is how we approach development projects. Rapid iteration and iterative development practices are central to our success. Our iterative culture fosters quick learning and adaptation, allowing us to respond effectively and efficiently to project needs. Our in-house rapid prototyping capability enables us to develop solutions swiftly, while ready-made modules support quick implementation.
We also have an on-site applications lab where we can test your biology on our solutions. If concerns or opportunities for improvement come up, we can loop back through the iterative development process to further refine our prototypes.
Case Study: TreeFrog Therapeutics
Our partnership with TreeFrog illustrates the journey of a client coming to us at the R&D stage and being supported all the way through to commercial manufacturing. This is also an example of a client requiring a fully bespoke solution, as nothing currently on the market could address their manufacturing needs.
The project focused on developing a closed, automated, single-use device for the industrial bioproduction of stem cell therapies. As with our other projects, we began with a workshop to understand the existing early-stage technology — in this case, TreeFrog’s stem cell encapsulation process and objectives. From there, we identified the technologies needed to achieve those goals and moved into prototype development and advancement.
We were then able to expand the partnership to turn the prototype into a GMP-compliant, pharmaceutical-grade production device. We were thrilled to co-create this solution with our client and to deliver a GMP-ready system that met their commercial needs.
Let’s Connect
Thank you for your time. I invite you to start a conversation with us — our contact information is on the screen. Please reach out for further resources, to discuss potential collaboration, or to talk through any bottlenecks where you might need assistance.
Your insights and questions are invaluable as we explore the future of cell therapy and manufacturing. We hope you’ll reach out so we can connect and discuss how to drive innovation together.
Thank you.
