BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

MaxCyte: Power loading

March 17, 2003 8:00 AM UTC

As viral vectors used in gene therapy have raised safety concerns, their elimination may be key to progress in the field. MaxCyte Corp. believes that one way to overcome this technical and regulatory hurdle is to insert DNA directly into cells as ex vivo therapy without using a viral vector. The company's system relies on electroporation to load large volumes of cells with genes for therapeutic and drug discovery applications.

According to CEO Douglas Doerfler, the key advantage of the company's approach is that only the antigen or compound is presented to the target cells, meaning they cannot exhibit an immune reaction to a viral vector. In addition, viral vectors with plasmids may integrate in cells that are not the desired target...