Today's guest, Andrew Breite, Director of Quality at VitaCyte, discusses VitaCyte's contributions to cell isolation and recovery. It's a field that few are as passionate about and dedicated to improving as much as Andrew and VitaCyte. 

Insights from the discussion: 

• VitaCyte was started to better understand the mechanism by which enzymes work cooperatively to connective tissue and different cells for things like basic cell signaling research, preparing cells for sale, and even clinical therapies like islet transplantation. 
• VitaCyte’s mission is to make reagents more suitable for and compatible for the cells of interest, and to move the overall field forward in terms of understanding how this process work.
• VitaCyte is different than others because they have a fundamental drive to understand how these reagents work, and how they will ultimately contribute to the quality of the cells that are recovered for specific applications. 

About Andrew Breite:

Andrew was originally trained as an analytical protein biochemist. His professional roles have focused primarily on purification process optimization, assay development and product development. Andrew now serves as the Dir of Quality Assurance for a purified enzyme reagent product portfolio at VitaCyte. He has served in numerous roles during his more than 10 years at VitaCyte and helped develop the quality management system from the ground up.

About VitaCyte: 

VitaCyte’s co-founders, Bob McCarthy and Francis Dwulet, were key contributors to the development of the first commercial, purified collagenase-protease enzyme mixture used to prepare cells for subsequent transplantation. This improved tissue dissociation enzyme reagent contributed to success of the “Edmonton Protocol,” the first report of successful treatment of adult patients with Type 1 Diabetes where 7 of 7 patients were “insulin independent” one year after islet transplantation. Prior to the introduction of this purified enzyme reagent, most laboratories performing this clinical research procedure were spending significant amounts of time qualifying collagenase lots for their effectiveness to isolate human islets. Once a lot was selected, the lot qualification procedure was repeated within a year, often because of the instability of the enzymes in storage.

VitaCyte was initially funded by receiving NIH NIDDK Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards, a state of Indiana 21st Century Fund award, and several state of Indiana SBIR matching awards.

The VitaCyte team’s curiosity about improving the state of cell isolation/recovery leads us to seek new solutions that reflect our mission to manufacture and support product/services that improve customer productivity. We encourage dialogue with our users who, in turn, stimulate us to develop new or improved products; to collaborate with lead users to develop a deeper understanding of how enzymes release cells from the extracellular matrix; and to engage others at scientific meetings to discuss their concerns about using enzyme to recover cells from tissue or after in vitro culture.

Show notes:

Website: https://www.vitacyte.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbreite/

Edmonton Protocol: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-an

Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/

Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast

Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8

Music by keldez