Clinical scale rapid expansion of lymphocytes for adoptive cell transfer therapy in the WAVE® bioreactor

BACKGROUND: To simplify clinical scale lymphocyte expansions, we investigated the use of the WAVE®, a closed system bioreactor that utilizes active perfusion to generate high cell numbers in minimal volumes. METHODS: We have developed an optimized rapid expansion protocol for the WAVE bioreactor that produces clinically relevant numbers of cells for our adoptive cell transfer clinical protocols. RESULTS: TIL and genetically modified PBL were rapidly expanded to clinically relevant scales in both static bags and the WAVE bioreactor. Both bioreactors produced comparable numbers of cells; however the cultures generated in the WAVE bioreactor had a higher percentage of CD4+ cells and had a less activated phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: The WAVE bioreactor simplifies the process of rapidly expanding tumor reactive lymphocytes under GMP conditions, and provides an alternate approach to cell generation for ACT protocols.