Oxford Biomedica enters research collaboration with Microsoft

Gene and cell therapy company Oxford Biomedica has entered into a research and development collaboration with Microsoft Research, it announced on Tuesday, to improve the yield and quality of next-generation gene therapy vectors using the cloud and machine learning.

The London-listed firm explained that cell and gene therapy had the potential to “transform” medicine, providing long-term and potentially curative treatment options for a wide range of diseases.

It said the first products were already approved and available for patients, however with the increase in demand for the innovative therapies came manufacturing challenges for the delivery systems that enabled them.

The collaboration would combine the expertise of Oxford Biomedica researchers in “cutting edge” vector development and large-scale manufacture, and the team within the ‘Station B initiative’ at Microsoft, to explore new ways to increase the yield and improve the purity of Oxford Biomedica's lentiviral vectors, while further reducing the cost.

Oxford Biomedica said it would contribute large datasets for analysis via the Microsoft Azure intelligent cloud platform.

Microsoft, in collaboration with Oxford Biomedica scientists, would utilise its cloud computing and machine learning capabilities to develop in silico models and novel algorithms to help advance the next generation of cell and gene delivery technology.

The collaboration would run for an initial two-year period, and could be extended by either party.

“Our ‘LentiVector’ gene delivery platform is recognised as a leading solution by major industry players but developing next-generation manufacturing technologies is complex and often involves uncertain outcomes,” said Oxford Biomedica chief business officer Jason Slingsby.

“The collaboration with Microsoft Research will harness our rich data resources to offer greater insights into the biological processes required to enhance quality and optimise yields of lentiviral vectors.

“It builds on our digital framework initiative, established in 2018, and the work underway in our collaboration with Synthace to rapidly and flexibly design, simulate and execute complex experimental designs to develop next generation manufacturing processes, including with stable producer cell lines for lentiviral vectors.”

Slingsby said the company’s goal was to enable “faster, cheaper and more reliable” manufacture of high quality next-generation cell and gene therapies, to allow more patients to benefit.

Andrew Phillips, head of biological computation at Microsoft, added that programming biology had the potential to solve some of the world's toughest problems in medicine, and to lay the foundations for a future bioeconomy based on sustainable technology.

“Oxford Biomedica is at the cutting edge of cell and gene therapy delivery and their highly sophisticated manufacturing processes generate a vast wealth of valuable data,” Phillips said.

“We anticipate that by combining computational modelling, lab automation, machine learning and the power of the cloud, we can help them in their quest to make existing treatments more cost effective and in future to develop groundbreaking new treatments.”