Use of Polyvinyl Alcohol for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Expansion

Researchers at Stanford have developed chemically defined, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-based media for culturing hematopoietic stem cells and immune cells (e.g., T cells). Confirmed in studies using both mouse and human cells, the PVA replaces the use of fetal bovine serum, bovine serum albumin, and recombinant serum albumin in media – all of which display batch-to-batch variability and are not GMP-grade reagents. Advantages of using PVA include that it is a lower cost, biologically inert reagent that is available at high-purity with minimal batch-to-batch variability. The new, PVA-based media will be useful for culturing cells for clinical bone marrow or HSC transplantation as well as T cell therapies that require large-scale expansion of T cells.

Stage of Development
The researchers have shown that PVA can replace serum albumin in a range of blood and immune cell cultures including cell lines, primary leukemia samples and human T lymphocytes. PVA can even replace human serum in the generation and expansion of functional chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, offering a potentially safer and more cost-efficient approach.