The final AUTOSTEM meeting was hosted by Fraunhofer-IPT in Aachen, Germany. The two-day meeting was held December 11 and 12, 2018 and 32 partner representatives were present.
Coordinator Mary Murphy (NUIG) welcomed, greeted and opened the meeting. Nora Ward (PT) reviewed the reporting requirements that are outstanding, the budgetary figures, deliverables achieved, milestones, scheduling, risk review and ethical matters. John O’Dea (CP) presented on the marrow harvesting and cell delivery device, then Eva Camarillo (ORB) updated the team on the cell selection and expansion technologies developed in AUTOSTEM. Panagiota Moutsatsou and Shibani Ratnayake (AS); Niamh Duffy (NUIG) and Christian Leschke (Zellwerk) provided news on the Bioreactors and several researchers from Tyndall (UCC) Paul Galvin, Patrick Sugrue, Colm Barrett, Alessandra La Rocha and Yuan Hu gave a progress report on the novel sensor technology. After lunch, Jelena Ochs (IPT) presented the AUTOSTEM platform followed by a live demonstration of the platform in action. Mary Murphy (NUIG) reported on the GMP preparation and GAMP aspects.
On the second day, the team of Georgina Shaw (NUIG) and Chiara Gentili and Elisabetta Palamà (UNIGE) showed results from the biological validations of the AUTOSTEM product, the MSC secretome and extracellular vesicles. Hanna Milewicz, Nick Gaddum and Mohsen Shaeri (CT) presented the whole process evaluation, risk assessment and regulatory support. Then, Nora Ward (PT) gave an overview of the dissemination and exploitation results including a summary of partner responses to the Exploitation Questionnaire.
The meeting concluded with a group discussion led by Dr Mary Murphy (NUIG) about publications and promoting the AUTOSTEM platform with industry.
Thank you to hosts Fraunhofer-IPT: Robert Schmitt, Niels König, Jelena Ochs, Bastian Niessing, Sven Jung, Ferdinand Biermann, Nikolaj Tissin, Daniel Reibert.
Learn more about AUTOSTEM: www.autostem2020.eu/
Download the AUTOSTEM final project flyer here.
AUTOSTEM has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 667932. The material presented and views expressed here are the responsibility of the author(s) only. The EU Commission takes no responsibility for any use made of the information set out.