Bracco Imaging recently announced its first expansion into the cell therapy space, driven by its expertise and newly developed applications of its long-established microbubble technology. Bracco’s new lipid-based microbubble product is designed to simplify key upstream steps in cell therapy manufacturing, offering a bead-free alternative to traditional magnetic bead approaches for cell enrichment and activation. Bracco will be engaging with technology developers, academic and translational research groups, and process development teams at cell therapy companies to evaluate the performance of this new application of their robust microbubble technology across a range of use cases.

“After more than two decades of use in diagnostic imaging, we recognized that Bracco’s microbubble technology has applications that will make cell therapy manufacturing faster, more affordable, and ubiquitous,” said Fulvio Renoldi Bracco, CEO of Bracco Imaging SpA. “We aim to give developers of both cell therapies and supporting manufacturing platforms a cleaner, scalable option for cell selection that can expand what’s possible beyond standard CD3+ selection workflows.”

“Therapeutics developers have told us that today’s standard, simple enrichment, falls short of their needs for precise cellular orchestration, creating an obstacle to scaling manufacturing,” said Sophie He, Vice President of Cell Therapy and Head of M&A and Partnering at Bracco Imaging. “We are introducing a ‘zero-footprint’ technology where the separation vector simply dissolves, allowing us to isolate highly specific cell populations without the cellular stress or residual contamination that currently cause bottlenecks. By ensuring intracellular signaling pathways remain unperturbed, we are providing therapeutic teams the clean biological canvas necessary to engineer the next generation of curative medicines.”

Bracco’s cell selection and activation microbubble technology is designed to support both positive- and negative-selection strategies and can be run sequentially to enable multi-step enrichment workflows. This flexibility is aimed at helping developers isolate harder-to-purify cell subsets.

The company has established a dedicated team focused on partnerships, technology evaluation, and platform development. Bracco’s partners in the space include CellBri to codevelop a flexible, closed cell selection system, as well as Limula and experts from University of Fribourg to develop an automated alternative to conventional magnetic bead-based cell selection and activation for cell therapy manufacturing. The company will share more later this year as early access partners help demonstrate the capabilities of this technology.

Bracco is offering lipid-based, gas-filled microbubble technology for bead-free cell selection and activation across cell therapy research and manufacturing workflows. It adapts Bracco’s proven microbubble technology that has been clinically validated and used in contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging for 25 years.

The technology uses proprietary lipid microbubbles to enable ligand-driven targeting of a wide range of immune cell subsets and supports positive, negative, and sequential selection. It enables gentle cell handling and downstream processes such as genetic modification and expansion. Unlike bead-based approaches, Bracco’s cell selection and activation microbubble technology can be removed simply by popping them or leaving them undisturbed for a short period of time.

Designed as an open, integration-ready platform, this technology is compatible with automated and closed manufacturing systems and is expected to be available for clinical use in 2027. Bracco Imaging is a global leader in diagnostic imaging, dedicated to improving people’s lives by shaping the future of prevention and precision medicine. With a strong passion for innovation, the company develops and provides a broad portfolio of pharmaceutical products for diagnostic imaging: contrast agents for X-ray, Computed Tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), as well microbubbles for Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS), and Molecular Imaging through radioactive tracers and novel PET imaging agents, alongside specialized medical devices and related services. The company is committed to advancing radiology by sharing knowledge to cultivate future thought leaders, linking today’s practice with tomorrow’s progress. Since 1927, Bracco Imaging has grown to more than 3,800 employees and now supports patients and radiology professionals in over 100 countries. Learn more at www.bracco.com/celltherapy