Q: Hello Marie, thank you for letting us interview you today! Can you please tell us a bit about your role?

Hello! I’m a Senior Scientist at OXGENE and my role is to develop new cell lines. We develop custom cell lines for our customers in commercial projects, but it’s also important for us develop new cell lines for research and development (R&D). I’m involved with the R&D side of things, developing the enhanced cell lines that OXGENE and WuXi Advanced Therapies can offer in future.

I mostly work to create novel stable LentiVEX™ cell lines with the aim to produce lentivirus at a high titre. You can use transient production systems, but the main disadvantage of transient systems (whether adherent or suspension) is the cost for large quantities of high-quality plasmids and also the transfection reagent. The alternative is to put all the packaging elements into a cell line for stable expression and scalable production, and this is what we offer with stable LentiVEX™ systems.

Q: What leads us nicely to the next question, what is the impact of your work?

Lentivirus is an important gene transfer agent for cell therapies, including CAR-T cell therapies. There are a lot of CAR-T therapies in clinical trials and a huge volume of lentivirus is needed to support those trials and to deliver treatments to as many patients as possible. That’s why we need the high-producing cell lines that we’re developing.

Our use of suspension rather than adherent cells impacts the scalability of lentiviral production.  The scalability we’ve achieved has directly resulted in a reduction of costs., In the past, lentiviral production has been based on adherent cells which are difficult to scale up. You need a lot of space. By switching to a suspension cell line, you can save a lot of money and space. My hope is that the cell lines that we are developing will be used by OXGENE and WuXi Advanced Therapies for even more efficient lentiviral production in future.

Q: What makes you proud to work here?

I love the fact that we’re a small but rapidly growing company, it’s very inspiring and rewarding. The rapid growth also creates more opportunity. The team is growing, the technology is growing, everything is growing.

Q: And your cells are growing!

Yes, they are, exactly!

Q: What do you enjoy most about your job day to day?

Aside from the long-term potential of developing the cell lines that could be used as standard in 5 or 10 years, there is a lot to enjoy on a day-to-day basis. I like that my job is very varied. It takes about 6 months to develop a cell line and there are a lot of different steps, so it never feels repetitive and it never gets boring! There are always different challenges and we use different techniques. We also find different processes to optimise to get the best outcome possible for each project.

I am usually in the lab on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, leaving time for meetings, planning and analysis on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes we are very busy and spend more time in the lab, other times we have more time to analyse, but overall it’s very balanced between these two sides of the role!

Q: And what do you think is the best thing about working here?

The culture. It’s so important to get along with your colleagues, your manager and everyone else.

Q: You mentioned culture earlier. What is the culture like in your lab?

I work closely within my team so it’s easy to get to know each other; we have a great culture and I think we’re a really good team. We always help each other, like when one of us has a lot of lab work. We all come from different backgrounds and countries and have different degrees.

Q: Is that a valuable thing, to have a team with different experiences?

Yes absolutely. By sharing our experiences, we can all improve together. Also, now that the workplace social events have restarted and there are more people around than during lockdowns, I feel like we’re a big family. Today we had an ‘international lunch’ where we shared dishes from our countries and cultures, it was amazing!

Q: That sounds great! Do you have a favourite workplace tradition?

Celebrating good results with the team! Usually with cake or doughnuts!

Day in the Life provides a snapshot of real life at OXGENE and WuXi Advanced Therapies, demonstrating how we invest in our innovative science and company culture to drive success for our customers and our employees. Read these insightful interviews with scientists, project managers, human resources representatives and others to learn how everyone contributes to helping pioneering companies get novel treatments to patients faster.