Césaré Cejas, PhD, MBA
gave a recent talk at the Bioengineering Symposium, a jointly organised event held by the
Oxford University Bioengineering Society
and
Warwick BioSoc
on the topic of "conceptualising innovations to confront current challenges in cell and gene therapy. Here's some of his key learnings from co-founding and building MFX to where it is today!
- Understand the industry… to precisely define your problem. What are the current challenges in the CGT industry? Scalability is definitely on top of list to properly translate process development to high-throughput manufacturing without the need for process re-optimisation.
MFX
leverages the geometric form factor to ensure fluid streamlines are identical in small and larger scales. How the fluid (media) interacts with the cells can significantly affect shear, which in turn affects cell expansion.
- Know your customer… to give voice & value. Identify your potential user and understand the pain points in their process and ask them about their “ wishlist.” In an ideal world, what do they seek in terms of hardware that improves their process? In
MFX
, we leverage understanding things at a small scale to make process improvements at a large scale: scale-down to screen, then scale-up and scale-out,
- Know your landscape… to know your position and market offering. Understand what others are doing in the space to develop strategy, which products/customers to keep satisfied, manage closely, monitor, or keep informed. When it comes to bringing something new to any market, resistance is expected but education and information help enable adoption of new innovation.
- Design, validate, iterate… rinse and repeat. Assess information from customers and competitive landscape, and iterate technology accordingly, making sure there is market need. Innovation needs to have a purpose. One can have the most ingenious idea but if customers don’t find a use for it, it then does not provide value for them and it’s not “innovative.”
- Build relationships… and network to stress-test the innovation. The CGT industry is built on relationships. A lot of the processes are relatively new and experimental, and because of ongoing challenges relating to optimisation and scalability - there is appetite for new innovation that improves accessibility and improves the journey from discovery/screening to commercialisation.
