GC Therapeutics (GCTx) has published new data in Nature Communications demonstrating that its TFome™ platform can efficiently generate human microglia-like cells from stem cells within days. This advance builds on the company’s previous work screening all annotated human transcription factors, now extending the platform to identify combinations that drive specific cell fates, including microglia, a brain-resident immune cell critical for studies of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. The full publication is available here.
Unlike traditional differentiation methods that depend on complex growth factor cocktails and specific media, GCTx reports that its approach directly activates the transcriptional regulators (proteins that control gene expression) responsible for determining cell identity. By using direct genetic programming, the TFome™ platform reports faster, more precise, and reproducible differentiation, bypassing the need for external signaling pathways.
“We do not coax cells – we code them. That is how we are creating the playbook for cell therapy manufacturing – genetically programmed, radically faster, and orders of magnitude cheaper,” said Parastoo Khoshakhlagh, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO of GCTx and co-author on the publication. “Today cell therapy is a boutique treatment, and our mission is to make them a first-line medicine. By radically simplifying how we make cells, we are on our way to making cell therapies accessible to every patient who needs them.”
To validate the platform, the research team targeted microglia differentiation. Existing protocols for generating microglia are often slow, variable, and rely on co-culture with neurons. GCTx’s method identified a six-transcription-factor combination capable of producing microglia rapidly and efficiently, without requiring external media additives.
“Our discovery platform is a compounding engine that drives our manufacturing innovation,” said Alex Ng, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of GCTx and a co-author on the publication. “Each screen expands our data foundation, allowing us to make more accurate predictions and re-use validated components. Every success gives us a launchpad for the next, reducing redundancy and accelerating delivery of high-quality cell programs.”
“We are not only reading cells, now we are precisely writing them – reshaping the framework for how any human cell can be engineered,” said George Church, Ph.D., Co-Founder of GCTx and Professor of Genetics. “The TFome™ lays the foundation for a programmable system – scalable across cell states, cell types, and tissues, tunable across contexts from regeneration to aging, and informed by the full depth of human biology. This opens up a new way to think about cell therapy: how it is built, how it works, and who it can reach.”
The company states that this development brings GCTx closer to its goal of programmable, industrialized cell manufacturing, which could allow wider access to advanced cell therapies.
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