G.W. Gant Luxton on Team to Make Cell Therapies Easier to Store and Ship
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology Adjunct Professor G.W. Gant Luxton is part of a research team exploring whether therapeutic cells can be stored and shipped at room temperature. The project, called CYBORGEL, is led by Cheemeng Tan, a professor of biomedical engineering, and has received an award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health with up to $36.5 million in potential funding.
CYBORGEL uses a reversible gel formed inside living cells to stabilize them during storage. Luxton's lab serves as the project's biophysics core, tackling a question the whole approach depends on: How can researchers tell whether a cell has entered the stabilized state and whether it has fully recovered afterward?
The lab uses particle-tracking rheology to measure changes in the physical properties of a cell’s interior as it enters and leaves the gelled state. Because these measurements can be made early, they help the team identify promising stabilization conditions before moving on to longer tests of cell function. Project scientist Daniel Elnatan developed the automated analysis pipeline for this work.
The team plans to test the approach with therapeutic cells, including placental stem cells used in a UC Davis spina bifida trial and CAR T cells used in Mayo Clinic’s cancer immunotherapy program.