Participant 5 | MILTENYI

MILTENYI BIOTEC BV & CO KG (MILTENYI)

Since its foundation in 1989 Miltenyi has become one of Germany’s most successful biotechnology companies with currently over 4200 employees worldwide. Miltenyi’s multidisciplinary R&D department, consisting of 500 scientists, technicians and engineers, is constantly developing novel reagents and instruments for use in immunology, cell biology, molecular biology and genetic engineering. The company´s mission clearly is to translate cellular therapies into clinical routine. Its products been used in more than 55,000 cell therapy procedures. In recent years, Miltenyi has established a broad product portfolio in this area and also was involved with numerous European and national translational medicine projects and trials around the world. However, Miltenyi is not only a provider of advanced technologies and innovative tools but also is a leading European driver to promote clinical cell and gene therapy trials.

Dr. Dominik Lock is Miltenyi’s principal investigator for T-FITNESS and scientifically supported by Dr. Thomas Schaser and Dr. Boris Engels while administrative support is provided by Dr. Sebastian Huhn. Dominik Lock is leading the research group “Early drug development” and, in general, his work evolves around non-viral gene engineering, process development as well as early pre-clinical development. His team solves challenges related to adoptive T cell therapies by inventing innovative technologies and novel manufacturing processes. By improving the potential of gene-engineered T cells, Dominik Lock strongly contributes to the company’s vision to ‘make cancer history’.

Within T-FITNESS, Miltenyi will focus on the scale up of the gene-editing using its proprietary T cell electroporation process combining the CliniMACS Prodigy platform with the CliniMACS electroporator. Finally, for the translation of the T-FITNESS project results, a cGMP-compliant manufacturing platform will be developed.