Q Chip Develops Fully Functioning MicroPlant

Q Chip, (Whales, UK) has developed a "MicroPlant" platform for producing commercial volumes of highly uniform polymer microcapsules or encapsulating biopharmaceutical materials.

Based on the company’s proprietary microfluidic technology, the MicroPlant platform is designed to maintain product quality in mass quantities without compromising the quality of the microcapsule. Several microfluidic circuits work in parallel to produce monodisperse polymer microcapsules with less than 5% variation in size, according to the company. This process reportedly eliminates the waste associated with much wider size distributions from other manufacturing methods.

The company can design, develop, and produce microcapsules that can be precisely loaded with multiple components and a range of biocompatible polymers. "Our core capability is the ability to produce very precise, sophisticated microcapsules using a range of biocompatible polymers," said Mark Barry, CEO of Q Chip. "We can load these microspheres with other components such as small molecules, biopharmaceuticals, and encapsulated cells."

Q chip can scale up from an R&D process to a system that can handle large-scale volumes without changing the reaction environment.

A prototype of the MicroPlant platform has been piloted at a client’s plant for the past few months and is in the process of a full scale-up. Q Chip is looking to use the platform for rational cell therapy design and enabling commercial volumes of encapsulated cell systems to be produced, the company stated in a release.