Interview with North American Business Manager Sean Higgins

Earlier this year, AcouSort’s North American Business Manager Dr. Sean Higgins was interviewed by BioBuzz, discussing AcouSort’s technology and the future he envisions for it:

“AcouSort’s technology is based on acoustic focusing or acoustophoresis. Our technology can push cells around from one solution to another, effectively washing cells without centrifugation. We’re able to fractionate the cells to pick off particular subtypes of white blood cells, which gets interesting in the immuno-oncology space.

The technology can pull off tumor-specific t-cells, which is important in the adaptive cell therapy world of CAR T. The next step from CAR T is actually using the patient’s own t-cell receptors–or TCRs–but you have to identify the TCRs that recognize the neo-epitopes.

There are challenges implementing CAR T and TCR processes in the broader world. For example, if a patient lives on an Iowa farm, they’d have to fly to one of the two places in the world where this process can be done. With AcouSort’s technology, we can collect the sample, fractionate it and stabilize it bedside. The cells can then be grown ex-vivo and brought back to the patient, limiting damage to the cells, reducing patient impact and lowering overall costs.

Ultracentrifugation of extracellular vesicles is really expensive and cumbersome. We can do this at the point of collection. AcouSort’s technology removes a lot of the process while creating a more stable sample.”

The full interview can be found here: Local Entrepreneur Brings Swedish Company AcouSort to BioHealth Capital Region