GE Healthcare has introduced the VIA Thaw CB1000 for thawing large volumes of cell therapies cryopreserved in cryo-bags. This range of automated, dry thawing units provides control over the thawing of sensitive therapies, and is designed to address key challenges faced by cell therapy companies. The VIA Thaw series is designed to overcome multiple inconsistent elements in standard water bath thawing practice, to deliver a simple, reproducible and traceable recovery system that maintains cell viability to prevent loss of therapeutic effect.
           
Cell therapies are a growing part of the healthcare landscape, with approximately 900 cell therapy clinical trials underway worldwide and several products approved as treatments. However, maintaining cell potency throughout the manufacture and cryogenic cold chain of these treatments is a major challenge. Cell thawing is the final and least controlled part of the cryochain. The process is often carried out in water baths across multiple sites, with inconsistencies and risk of water-borne contamination. 
           
GE Healthcare’s VIA Thaw CB1000 is designed to standardize and streamline the recovery of cryopreserved samples with a system that captures a complete, auditable thaw record. Combining automation with dry conduction thawing, it helps enable the thaw endpoint to be precisely determined, and eliminates the contamination risk associated with water baths. Thaw profiles can be customized to every cell therapy sample and transmitted to thawers across multiple sites. All VIA Thaw CB1000 units have a ‘lock-down’ option to limit the operator to a single pre-set profile and minimize the risk of error. Electronic data logging creates a record of each step in the thawing process and enables sources of variation to be identified quickly. All VIA Thaw units integrate with the GE’s digital my.Cryochain platform, to standardize and audit thawing processes from any web-browser.
 
Ger Brophy, general manager, Cell Therapy, GE Healthcare said: “As the number of cell therapies increases, GE Healthcare has been focusing on creating solutions that safeguard the manufacture and delivery of these therapies. The new VIA Thaw series will provide certainty in cell thawing, through an automated, dry process, and complete visibility over the thawing procedure. This technology has the ability to transform the final stage of cell therapy and help advance the industrialization and delivery of these potentially life-saving therapies.”