Development of a robotic cluster for automated and scalable cell therapy manufacturing.

BACKGROUND AIMS: The production of commercial autologous cell therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells requires complex manual manufacturing processes. Skilled labor costs and challenges in manufacturing scale-out have contributed to high prices for these products. METHODS: We present a robotic system that uses industry-standard cell therapy manufacturing equipment to automate the steps involved in cell therapy manufacturing. The robotic cluster consists of a robotic arm and customized modules, allowing the robot to manipulate a variety of standard cell therapy instruments and materials such as incubators, bioreactors, and reagent bags. This system enables existing manual manufacturing processes to be rapidly adapted to robotic manufacturing, without having to adopt a completely new technology platform. Proof-of-concept for the robotic cluster's expansion module was demonstrated by expanding human CD8+ T cells. RESULTS: The robotic cultures showed comparable cell yields, viability, and identity to those manually performed. In addition, the robotic system was able to maintain culture sterility. CONCLUSIONS: Such modular robotic solutions may support scale-up and scale-out of cell therapies that are developed using classical manual methods in academic laboratories and biotechnology companies. This approach offers a pathway for overcoming manufacturing challenges associated with manual processes, ultimately contributing to the broader accessibility and affordability for personalized immunotherapies.

The green leafhopper, Cicadella viridis (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Cicadellidae), jumps with near-constant acceleration.

Jumping insects develop accelerations that can greatly exceed gravitational acceleration. Although several species have been analysed using different tools, ranging from a purely physical to a morpho-physiological approach, instantaneous dynamic and kinematic data concerning the jumping motion are lacking. This is mainly due to the difficulty in observing in detail events that occur in a few milliseconds. In this study, the behaviour of the green leafhopper, Cicadella viridis, was investigated during the take-off phase of the jump, through high-speed video recordings (8000 frames s(-1)). We demonstrate that C. viridis is able to maintain fairly constant acceleration during overall leg elongation. The force exerted at the foot-ground interface is nearly constant and differs from the force expected from other typical motion models. A biomechanical model was used to highlight that this ability relies on the morphology of C. viridis hind legs, which act as a motion converter with a variable transmission ratio and use the time-dependent musculo-elastic force to generate a nearly constant thrust at the body-ground interface. This modulation mechanism minimizes the risk of breaking the substrate thanks to the absence of force peaks. The results of this study are of broad relevance in different research fields ranging from biomechanics to robotics.

Real-time control and evaluation of a teleoperated miniature arm for Single Port Laparoscopy.

This paper presents the control architecture and the first performance evaluation results of a novel and highly-dexterous 18 degrees of freedom (DOF) miniature master/slave teleoperated robotic system called SPRINT (Single-Port la-paRoscopy bimaNual roboT). The system was evaluated in terms of positioning accuracy, repeatability, tracking error during local teleoperation and end-effector payload. Moreover, it was experimentally verified that the control architecture is real-time compliant at an operating frequency of 1 kHz and it is also reliable in terms of safety. The architecture accounts for cases when the robot is lead through singularities, and includes other safety mechanisms, such as supervision tasks and watchdog timers. Peliminary tests that were performed by surgeons in-vitro suggest that the SPRINT robot, along with its real-time control architecture, could become in the near future a reliable system in the field of Single Port Laparoscopy.