Immune Cell Therapy
Mitigate risk and embed flexibility into your immune cell therapy workflow.
Immune cell therapy harnesses the body’s immune system to fight diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infections by using engineered or expanded immune cells (i.e. T cells, NK cells, macrophages) as powerful therapeutic agents. As the field progresses, developers of immune cell therapies face significant challenges, including achieving optimal immune cell expansion, maintaining cell functionality, and meeting rigorous quality and regulatory standards during manufacturing.
R&D Systems supports immune cell therapy research and production with a comprehensive suite of workflow solutions. Our range ensures flexibility and efficiency in immune cell culture with premium animal-free and GMP cytokines available in both lyophilized and ready-to-use liquid or closed-system formats, the non-viral TcBuster genome editing system, specialized GMP media and supplements, and the G-Rex cell culture platform through our partnership with ScaleReady.
For thorough immune cell therapy characterization, we also offer validated antibodies, ELISA kits, and advanced automated protein analysis platforms.
We deliver the reliable phase-appropriate reagents and technologies you need to streamline immune cell therapy development, scale-up, and manufacturing processes with confidence
Immune Cell Therapy Workflow
When scaling isolated leukocyte populations, how do you maintain optimal growth conditions while delivering consistent, reproducible lots? It starts with a trusted supplier—one that provides a dependable supply of high-quality cell culture media, additives, and activators. With over 90% of R&D Systems products manufactured in-house, we maintain tight control over our supply chain, helping you achieve reliable lot-to-lot consistency at scale.
Featured Solutions
Optimize Your Immune Cell Culture
Improve reproducibility with ExCellerate™ media—a highly defined cell culture medium engineered specifically for immune cell culture. ExCellerate is serum- and animal component–free, supporting maximum lot consistency and streamlined scale-up.
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Animal-Free RUO and GMP Cytokines
Accelerate your time to market by improving your culture expansion consistency. R&D Systems animal-free RUO cytokines and growth factors are manufactured using the same process as our GMP cytokines, ensuring identical bioactivity and minimizing process disruption during your transition to GMP.
Browse Animal-Free RUO and GMP Cytokines
Verify with Immunoassays
Generate accurate, high-quality data with confidence using our sensitive and specific immunoassay solutions. From cytokine quantification with Ella™ to intracellular signaling analysis with Simple Western™, our platforms deliver reliable results you can trust.
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QC Testing of GMP Proteins
Thorough characterization of raw materials and reagents is essential for ensuring the safety and efficacy of cell therapy products. Maurice™, our automated capillary electrophoresis system, simplifies GMP protein characterization—saving time, reducing sample requirements, and minimizing labor.
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Cell engineering is one of the most complex and time-intensive stages of immune cell therapy development. From payload delivery to establishing stable protein expression, this step can quickly become a bottleneck. Our cell engineering solutions are designed to help you save time, build scalability into your process, and move forward with confidence.
Featured Solutions
Rapid Non-Viral Gene Delivery
Accelerate gene delivery with the transposon-based TcBuster™ system. This non-viral platform enables rapid generation and electroporation of transgenes up to 10 kb, making it a powerful solution for both proof-of-concept studies and manufacturing process development.
Reliably Quantify CAR+ Cells
Quickly assess engineering efficiency with Fluorokines™ fluorescent-labeled recombinant proteins. These reagents allow direct staining, detection, and quantification of CAR expression by flow cytometry with high specificity and ease.
Cell Dispensing Made Easy
Achieve optimal clonality with Namocell Single Cell Dispensers. Designed for precise, efficient single-cell dispensing, Namocell simplies clone selection and streamlines downstream cell engineering workflows.
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Automated Protein Expression Quantification
Confidently quantify protein expression and verify knock-out following gene editing with Simple Western – the only fully automated Western blot system available. By combining capillary electrophoresis with sensitive immunodetection, Simple Western delivers quantitative results in as little as 3 hours using just 3 µL of sample.
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Obtaining robust cell expansion is critical for downstream processing steps and meeting therapeutic dosing requirements. At this stage, scalability and lot-to-lot consistency are the primary challenges. That’s why we offer high-quality bioreactors, media, and cytokines designed to help you generate large, consistent batches, run after run.
Featured Solutions
Quality Cytokines & Growth Factors
Increase safety, ensure bioactivity, and minimize variability with high quality Animal-Free RUO and GMP proteins. Backed by a robust quality management system, our cytokines and growth factors deliver reliable lot-to-lot consistency in both purity and bioactivity.
Browse Animal-Free and GMP Cytokines
Scale Up Your Process
Scale up and scale out with speed, flexibility, and consistency through our ScaleReady partnership. G-Rex™ is a scalable, gas-permeable bioreactor engineered for rapid cell expansion. By enabling extended nutrient delivery without added labor, pumps, mixing, or shaking, G-Rex overcomes the limitations of traditional plates and flasks.
Optimize Your Immune Cell Cultures
Maintain consistency across supply, formulation, and performance with ExCellerate media. Optimized specifically for T cell or NK cell cultures, these formulations are serum- and xeno-free to support reliable, reproducible expansion.
Monitoring Cell Expansion
Our immunoassay workflow solutions enable sensitive and specific cell expansion analysis, whilst conserving precious samples. Using Simple Western™ systems, you can combine protein size or charge separation with a quantitative immunoassay readout, producing accurate, reproducible, and highly specific analytical-grade protein expression potency assays.
Discover Immunoassay Solutions
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Ensuring that your therapy meets all critical quality attributes (CQAs) requires assays and equipment with high specificity and sensitivity. Confirm that your finished product is functional, safe and consistent with customizable, flexible, and automated assay and analytics systems that provide you with the reliable, reproducible results you need.
Featured Solutions
Detect CARs with High Specificity
Discover a full suite of high-specificity Flow Cytometry antibodies, as well as Fluorokines™, fluorescent-labeled recombinant proteins, that enable highly specific detection of cell markers, CARs, immune checkpoint receptors, and more by flow cytometry.
Discover Flow Cytometry Reagents
Automate Your Cytokine Release Assays
Ella™ is a benchtop automated ELISA platform that delivers consistent, reproducible data with no manual steps. With Ella, you can perform highly specific and reliable potency assays of your final products, allowing you to detect key markers of cytotoxic activity such as IFN-γ.
Ella IFN-gamma Assay for QC Release Testing
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Monitoring engineered cells after infusion is essential for validating both the efficacy and safety of your cell therapy. Our monitoring solutions enable comprehensive tracking of key parameters, including cell trafficking, persistence, activation, cytokine release syndrome (CRS), and disease biomarkers, helping you generate deeper insights and improve patient outcomes.
Featured Solutions
Verify Cell Therapy Delivery and Response with High Specificity
RNAscope ISH assays enable spatial detection of cell therapies in preclinical tissues and biopsy samples. With single-cell and single-molecule sensitivity, RNAscope enables robust assessment of therapeutic biodistribution, safety, and efficacy. When combined with immunohistochemistry or immunofluorescence, RNAscope further reveals immune cell identity and activation states by visualizing cytokine expression in both therapeutic and endogenous immune cells.
Learn More About RNAscope ISH Technology
High-Throughput Monitoring of the Immune Response
Luminex assays maximize multiplexing capacity and flexibility while maintaining assay specificity. These bead-based assays generate robust and reproducible data, while rapidly quantifying immune responses and cytokine release. With customizable panels and an extensive mix-and-match menu, analyze up to 50 targets per sample for comprehensive clinical immune monitoring.
Decoding Tumor Complexity
By pairing the flexibility and specificity of Western blots with the analytical-grade quantitation of ELISA, Simple Western™ systems are ideal for shedding light on T-cell activation, exhaustion mechanisms, and the complexities of tumor microenvironments. For a more comprehensive understanding of cell heterogeneity, Single-Cell Westerns can analyze the tumor microenvironment at a single-cell level, revealing nuances in protein expression with unparalleled precision.
Resources
- Application Note: Preclinical CAR-T Cell Target Safety, Biodistribution, and Tumor Infiltration Analysis using the RNAscope ISH Assay
- Application Note: Keeping the Promise of Immuno-Oncology with Simple Western and Single-Cell Western
- Flyer: T-Cell Therapy Trafficking and Activation Analysis Using RNAscope in situ Hybridization
Immune Cell Therapy Workflow Wall Poster
Workflow solutions for producing immune cells at scale for therapeutic use.
Closed Process Solutions for Cell Therapy
Reduce variability and risk in cell therapies with ProPak GMP cytokines and bagged GMP T cell media.
Cell & Gene Therapy Manufacturing Solutions
Solutions to successfully scale cell therapies from preclinical development to commercialization.