One of the main bottlenecks in the translation of stem cells to therapy is the difficulty in generating clinical numbers of these cells. 2D protocols, which are still widely used in culture of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and their derivatives, are very labour intensive and expose cells to different conditions than those they will be subjected in vivo. As such, I am particularly interested in how to adapt standard Bioprocess Engineering principles to stem cells, in order to be able to produce clinical-grade and scale derivatives of hiPSCs with the potential to be used a wide range of biomedical applications. In particular, my work consists in the characterisation of novel bioreactor configurations and in their usage for highly efficient differentiation of hiPSCs, integrated, if necessary, with downstream processing of these cells for removal of undifferentiated hiPSCs with tumorigenic potential, along with other contaminant cell types, whose effects in the target organs are unpredictable.
