Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 23, 2026
Efficient and Rapid Generation of CAR-T and Cytokine-Induced Killer Cells in GMP-scalable Devices
Published on: December 5, 2025
Clinical scale rapid expansion of lymphocytes for adoptive cell transfer therapy in the WAVE® bioreactor
Robert P T Somerville1, Laura Devillier, Maria R Parkhurst
1Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
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.
