Microsoft of Cell Therapy?
by Startacus Admin
The Cambridge-based startup BiologIC Technologies that has created an empowering tool to drive the next wave of biological innovation
Cancer. The big C. It’s something that we’ve been working towards a cure for - not Startacus personally - for a long time. One way of going about this is cell therapy, but the barrier is, as always, money. The cost is prohibitive. Aside from the long and fruitless tirade we could go on about how absurd this is, what can be done to get around this barrier? Well, we need a significant change in the way laboratory automation works, and to ensure that change is available to all labs. Cambridge-based startup BiologIC Technologies is using their unique approach to 3D printing to take a shot at becoming the ‘Microsoft of cell therapy’.
The startup is looking to democratize and decentralise the manufacture of therapies such as CAR-T (where a patient’s Chimeric antigen receptor T-cells are changed in a lab to have them attack cancer cells) with a ‘desktop PC of life sciences’ able to run multiple cell 
therapy workflows - one that is standardised and sitting in every lab, in the same way that the desktop PC revolutionised computing and changed our lives.
This will be done by plugging cartridges into the instrument which combine milli-fluidic and micro-fluidic “circuits”; two things we completely understand. These allow for multiple cell therapy programs in the same way a computer runs different software programs, and enable users to update cartridge designs to iterate their science, fully automated, in just one working day.
BiologIC Technologies’ co-founder Nick Rollings uses the analogy of today’s life sciences automation being like electronics in the 50s, made up of separate components; their solution here is, in this analogy, like the creation of the first circuits through integration and miniaturisation of these components.
Presently, BiologIC Technologies is self-funded, but they are in talks with investors, and will be opening up their first seed funding round this year.
We think it goes without saying that this is a technology that should be taken notice of, and almost certainly will.
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Published on: 19th January 2020
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