GOTHENBURG, Sweden — December 14, 2023 — Swedish tissue therapy company VERIGRAFT today announced that along with the University of Skövde, SciCross and RISE, it is the joint recipient of a SEK 6 million grant from Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova to develop an AI-based method to increase quality of graft manufacturing.
VERIGRAFT has developed a pioneering technique that uses autologous components from the recipient’s blood to create personalized tissue-engineered veins (P-TEV) that can be implanted without the need for immunosuppressive drugs. The Company is currently applying these grafts in the TECVI-1 first-in-man clinical trial in patients with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI).
In the new project due to run through to October 2026, researchers will gather data about genes, cells, proteins, and other factors from the recipient’s healthy vessels and various stages of the blood vessel production. In addition, data from both prior to implantation and one year after transplantation will be collected. The datasets will then be used to train an AI-model to understand patterns in the information and help predict manufacturing quality parameters. The goal is to use the method in the future during the manufacturing process and to accelerate product release for transplantation into a patient.
“We are delighted to participate in this project since our long-term aim is develop personalized vein and artery grafts at scale and with highest quality,” says VERIGRAFT CEO Petter Björquist. “The data gathered in this project will also help us move towards 3D printing of graft scaffolds.”
“Our goal is to come up with improved AI tools that are digitalized and scalable for industrial production lines of ATMPs such as VERIGRAFTS’s tissue grafts. This will help patients gain access to new and promising treatments,” says Jane Synnergren, project leader and Professor in Bioinformatics, University of Skövde.
VERIGRAFT is a biotechnology company based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company is rooted in the Karolinska Institute, based on groundbreaking basic science with a focus on regenerative medicine since 2014.
Posted: December 14, 2023
Source: VERIGRAFT