In Vitro Assays for CAR-T Therapy Development

Trusted in vitro assay technologies to ensure that you don’t compromise your ambition

In vitro assays, from simple cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration assays to more complex co-culture models, such as immune cell killing and phagocytosis assays, are critical for the initial research, development, and ultimately the characterization of CAR-T therapeutic treatments.

Current approaches to evaluating the modulation of the immune response are typically end point, requiring indirect readouts, and are not analyzed within a physiologically relevant environment. They provide little to no information about the long-term time course of the biology and often cannot fully reveal the dynamic interactions between immune and cancer cells.

Because you need to trust your therapy, and patient safety and time to result are top priorities, you need solutions that deliver the most reproducible biologically relevant results from the beginning. The Intellicyt® iQue3 enables cytotoxicity assays while the IncuCyte^® Live-Cell Analysis System allows you to visualize and analyze immune cell proliferation and clustering, chemotaxis, phagocytosis and immune cell killing, in real time and without compromising your cell cultures. The Virus Counter^® Platform enables rapid and precise viral particle quantification of the vector you have selected to transduce your T cells.

Explore Sartorius in vitro assays essential for CAR-T therapy discovery & development that offer great precision, performance, and safety, and deliver maximum confidence in results.

The genetic material used to transform T cells into CAR-T cells is often delivered by a viral vector. Cells such as HEK293s are often used to grow the viral vector; these cultures must be maintained at a meticulous standard for optimal virus production and downstream success. In vitro cell-based assays conducted to monitor the health and identity of these cell populations must be reliable, reproducible, fast, and cost-effective.

The success of your viral vector is dependent on two measures: total viral particles and infectious titer. For retrovirus, lentivirus, adeno-associated virus, and other viral vectors, the Virus Counter^® Platform represents a shift from traditional imprecise methods of virus measurement (plaque assays, LD50, TCID50) by delivering superior performance in the form of low cost per sample, fast time to answer, and robust, biologically relevant virus quantitation.

Incucyte^® Live-Cell Analysis System

Automatically capture and analyze images of living 2D and 3D cell cultures. Get real time visualization of immune-cell killing assays, cell health, and viability. Assess antibody mediated phagocytosis, immune cell mediated apoptosis, and T-cell proliferation & clustering without disturbing cells.

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Intellicyt^® iQue3

Achieve fast, reliable analysis of your in vitro assay readouts with the Intellicyt^® iQue3. The combination of speed and miniaturization, with powerful multi-parametric data analysis and visualization, gives you actionable results from a few microliters of sample, in record time.
Screen for immune cell killing, cytokine profiling, and more. Perform cytotoxicity assays easily, quickly, and reproducibly.

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Application Notes:

Pipetting with Picus^® and Tacta^®

Reliability of an assay depends strongly on the preparation phase. The programmable electronic pipette Picus reduces variability between users. Selecting a multichannel pipette will speed up your work and improve cell well-being by reducing the time outside the incubator. Both electronic Picus and manual Tacta pipettes guarantee the best pipetting ergonomics.

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Application Note:

How to Avoid Contamination in Pipetting

Virus Counter^® Platform

CAR-T viral vector quantification has never been easier or faster. Measure total virus particles quickly and reproducibly to enable in vitro assays. ViroTag^® no-wash assays for lentivirus, AAV, and other viruses minimize variability and enable confidence over traditional methods.

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Application Note:

Rapid, Real Time Quantification of Lentivirus Particles Using Antibody-Based Detection on the Virus Counter^® 3100 Platform

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Meet the Virus Counter^® Platform - Rapid, Direct, Biologically Relevant Virus Quantitation

In vitro assays for early-stage CAR-T therapy research and development are vital for downstream success. Several distinct cell populations must be maintained and analyzed at this stage: not only multiple cancer cell lines for in vitro characterization, but also the cells that arise from isolated PBMCs, and that will ultimately be selected, activated, and transduced to form the population for CAR-T therapy.

While not every cell-based assay in early research is subject to the same stringent regulatory guidelines of downstream stages, it is greatly benefited by using the highest quality equipment, software, and reagents. This quality assurance forms the basis for excellence and confidence in results from the earliest steps of the project through its completion and ultimate progression into a more regulated environment. When your ambition is for your project to eventually culminate in a clinical product, don’t compromise that ambition: instead, rely on the solutions provided by Sartorius to help you trust every result, from every assay.