Beta-Stage Testing Underway for the Alerion Cell Separation System

Akadeum Life Sciences has begun beta-stage testing its Alerion cell separation system to assess the instrument’s reliability and functionality before it is officially launched. 
 
Inherent time and cost inefficiencies in cell therapy workflows have forced many contract development and manufacturing organizations, cell and gene therapy companies, and researchers to settle for inadequate performance at higher costs, with treatments such as CAR T cell therapy costing more than $500,000. The Alerion instrument addresses these inefficiencies by providing cell therapy developers with a scalable, rapid, and gentler method of separating a higher yield of healthy cells compared to legacy magnetic-activated cell separation (MACS) and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) instruments, Akadeum Life Sciences claims. 
 
The Alerion instrument, touted as an industry first at scale negative selection, is a closed system that allows T cells to be separated from a leukopak using Akadeum’s buoyancy-activated cell-sorting (BACS) microbubble technology. It is compatible with existing high-performance positive selection (and activation) and negative selection applications. During its beta phase, Akadeum customers experience 90% cell recovery rates, semi-automated sample processing, and time savings, according to the company. While other systems require between eight and 185 hours to process, beta users have simultaneously isolated cells from two samples in less than an hour. Additionally, while other systems have a 20B cell max, the Alerion system has a 100B cell per hour capacity.
 
“Akadeum’s Best in Class Alerion instrument marks a tectonic shift in clinical manufacturing workflows. The system embodies our dedication to cell therapy innovation, as the scalability, time savings, and higher yield of healthy cells provide the industry with the efficiency, scale and flexibility it needs to reduce preventable deaths,” Akadeuim Life Sciences Vice President of Commercial Ken Gordon said. “…the beta phase is providing Akadeum with invaluable information that allows continued innovation of its solutions, while empowering it customers to reimagine workflows and processes in ways that will ultimately revolutionize the outcomes of millions of patients, throughout the world, by increasing the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of cell therapy technology.”
 
Akadeum Life Sciences aims to solve longstanding sample preparation problems in research, diagnostics, and cell therapy markets with a flotation-based target isolation platform technology. Without the critical step of separation (isolating biological targets like DNA, proteins, or cells from biological samples), many diagnostics and therapies would not be possible. Akadeum was the first to commercialize buoyancy activated cell sorting microbubble kits for cell isolation applications. In parallel, Akadeum is also establishing industry partnerships. Akadeum’s kits are for research use only.