What is CELLIMAGE?

CELLIMAGE is an Irish government-backed research project developing novel AI technologies to improve Cell Therapy manufacturing.

Who are the CELLIMAGE partners?

The project is a collaboration between the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI Galway, Dublin-based bioanalytics developer ValitaCell Ltd, and Intel.

What is the technology challenge?

Mesenchymal stem cells are being developed as a novel class of medicine to treat conditions including rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, Crohn’s disease, various cancers and more besides. Stem cells are harvested from a patient or donor, grown to high numbers, then re-administered.

Clinical trials show enormous promise, but scaling trials up to routine clinical use is a difficult biomanufacturing challenge. Throughout biomanufacturing, cells must maintain their identity and quality as they are grown in order to be clinically useful. They are apt to change or lose quality, however, rendering them clinically ineffective. Manufacturing needs to monitor cells constantly to keep production on track.

The difficulty is that laboratory assessment of stem cell identity and quality currently takes far too long to be used as a bioprocess analytic. Information that is needed within minutes-to-hours can take days or even weeks to generate. Without fast, responsive cell analytics it is difficult to keep a bioprocess on track to ensure high yields of a quality cell product.

The CELLIMAGE challenge is to make fast, responsive cell analytics.

What is the disruptive innovation?

Microscopy is a key laboratory tool for assessing stem cells. When combined with chemical dyes and stains that emphasise cell shape, internal structures and health, microscopy generates very rich insights into cell identity and quality.

The difficulty is that cell staining is too slow, complicated and labour-intensive to implement on the factory floor. We cannot build fast, responsive cell analytics and bioprocess controllers around staining.

Our disruptive innovation is to displace real stains with “virtual stains” driven by AI.

We build robust Deep Learning models to digitally embellish unstained brightfield images that can easily be acquired in a few minutes. Virtual staining is simple, rich and fast enough to use as a bioprocess analytic.

What will each partner work on?

NUI Galway will leverage their vast experience across stem cell manufacturing to generate culture and analyse cells by imaging, staining, 'omics and conventional assays. ValitaCell will capture the laboratory data and build AI pipelines to predict difficult measurements from label-free images. Intel will support AI development and build the deployment platform to get pipelines into customer hands.

What will CELLIMAGE deliver?

We are creating a vast image dataset to extend our suite of AI-driven image analysis tools. We are also creating the software to get our AI tools into customer hands. CELLIMAGE will then demonstrate the utility of the tools in the laboratory and on testbeds in the field.

Ultimately, we are building advanced cell analytics to take Cell Therapy manufacturing to new levels of performance. Our goal is to ensure bioprocessing is no barrier to realising the enormous clinical potential of stem and other cell therapies.