VectorBuilder and MaxCyte Partner to Develop Next-Generation Non-Viral Gene Delivery Platform for Ex Vivo Cell Therapies
VectorBuilder and MaxCyte have entered into a strategic partnership aimed at developing a next-generation non-viral gene delivery platform for ex vivo cell engineering, a move that could help address some of the most persistent manufacturing, safety and scalability challenges in cell therapy development. By combining VectorBuilder’s proprietary MiniVec™ plasmid system with MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation® platform, the two companies are seeking to create a more efficient, safer and commercially practical solution for engineering therapeutic cells used in applications such as CAR-T, CAR-NK and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based therapies.
The collaboration brings together two companies with complementary capabilities in gene delivery and cell engineering at a time when the cell therapy field is under growing pressure to improve manufacturing performance, reduce cost and increase the reliability of production processes. Although ex vivo cell therapies have generated significant clinical and commercial interest over the last decade, developers continue to face substantial obstacles in moving promising therapies from the research setting into scalable and sustainable clinical manufacturing.
VectorBuilder, known for its gene delivery technologies and contract development and manufacturing services, and MaxCyte, a company focused on cell engineering platforms for next-generation therapeutics, said the partnership is designed to tackle these bottlenecks through a new electroporation-based approach that may improve both cell quality and manufacturing efficiency.
Growing promise of ex vivo cell therapy meets persistent delivery challenges
Ex vivo cell therapy has emerged as one of the most dynamic areas of modern biotechnology. The approach involves collecting cells from a patient or donor, engineering them outside the body, and then administering them as a therapeutic product. This strategy has become especially important in oncology, where CAR-T therapies have already demonstrated the ability to deliver meaningful clinical benefit in certain blood cancers. Interest is also expanding into CAR-NK therapies, engineered stem cell-based products, and other cell-based platforms that could potentially treat a broad range of cancers, immune disorders and genetic diseases.
Yet despite the momentum, the process of engineering cells efficiently and safely remains a major technical and commercial challenge. The method used to deliver genetic payloads into target cells can have a profound impact on cell viability, manufacturing success, product consistency and eventual therapeutic performance.
Traditional electroporation approaches using conventional DNA or RNA can be effective in introducing material into cells, but they often come at a cost. Many systems expose cells to substantial stress during the delivery process, which can reduce viability, compromise function and ultimately limit the number of usable therapeutic cells that emerge from manufacturing. At the same time, while lentiviral vectors remain widely used in cell therapy manufacturing because of their efficiency and durability, they introduce a different set of concerns. Viral systems can be expensive to produce, operationally complex and associated with safety risks, including the possibility of vector integration into the host genome, which in rare cases may contribute to malignancy or other unintended effects.
These trade-offs have left the field searching for a better solution—one that preserves the efficiency and scalability required for commercial cell therapy production without sacrificing safety, flexibility or cost-effectiveness.
A partnership built around non-viral innovation
The newly announced collaboration between VectorBuilder and MaxCyte is centered on the idea that non-viral gene delivery can be improved substantially by combining optimized plasmid design with a gentler and more scalable electroporation process. Under the partnership, the companies plan to co-develop a new ex vivo gene delivery solution that integrates VectorBuilder’s MiniVec backbone with MaxCyte’s clinical Flow Electroporation technology.
The goal is to establish a platform that can support more reliable cell engineering while also fitting the practical needs of cell therapy developers moving from discovery into clinical development and commercial manufacturing. Rather than treating gene delivery as a standalone technical step, the collaboration appears to be positioning the new platform as a more comprehensive solution for the end-to-end development of ex vivo cell therapies.
The importance of that approach lies in the fact that cell therapy developers are increasingly evaluating not just whether a platform works scientifically, but whether it can support a viable manufacturing and business model. Developers need systems that can produce enough high-quality cells, perform consistently across different payloads and cell types, and scale economically as programs progress toward late-stage trials and eventual commercialization.
MiniVec and Flow Electroporation target both manufacturing simplicity and cell health
At the center of the partnership is MiniVec, VectorBuilder’s miniaturized plasmid backbone platform. According to the companies, MiniVec was designed to address several of the limitations associated with conventional plasmid systems used in non-viral cell engineering. One of its distinguishing features is that it eliminates the need for antibiotic- or additive-based selection during fermentation, a step that can complicate manufacturing and regulatory translation. By simplifying this part of the process, MiniVec may offer a more streamlined route to GMP-grade plasmid production, which is essential for clinical and commercial applications.
The platform also contains reduced prokaryotic sequences, a design element that the companies say has been shown to improve both yield and overall performance across a range of applications. In practical terms, that could translate into more efficient plasmid production and potentially better behavior once the payload is introduced into target cells.
MaxCyte contributes the other half of the solution through its Flow Electroporation® technology, a platform already well known in the cell therapy sector. Unlike conventional batch electroporation systems, Flow Electroporation uses a continuous-flow process designed to reduce stress on cells during gene transfer. By making the delivery process gentler, the technology aims to preserve cell viability, functionality and recovery, all of which are critical to the manufacture of high-quality therapeutic cell products.
The combination of these two technologies is intended to create a two-part advantage. On one side, MiniVec is designed to improve the payload itself and simplify upstream manufacturing. On the other, Flow Electroporation is meant to improve the delivery process, protecting the cells while maintaining high transfection performance. Together, the companies believe the system can produce significantly better results than conventional non-viral delivery approaches.
Early data suggest improvements in CAR-T manufacturing performance
VectorBuilder and MaxCyte said preliminary data from CAR-T manufacturing provide an early indication of the potential benefits of the combined platform. According to the companies, the integrated system demonstrated a 2.4-fold increase in cell viability and 1.4-fold higher gene expression compared with conventional systems.
Those early performance signals are notable because cell viability and gene expression are two of the most important metrics in ex vivo cell engineering. High viability means more cells survive the engineering process and remain functional enough to be used therapeutically, while stronger gene expression may support better product potency or more reliable therapeutic activity.
In the context of cell therapy manufacturing, even incremental improvements in these parameters can have a meaningful impact on the economics and feasibility of production. Better viability can reduce material waste and improve the consistency of manufacturing runs, while higher expression may help developers achieve desired product specifications more efficiently. If those early findings hold up across broader applications and larger-scale studies, the platform could offer practical benefits well beyond technical optimization alone.
Designed for flexibility across payloads and applications
Another key feature of the partnership is the versatility of the underlying technologies. The companies noted that both MiniVec and Flow Electroporation have been validated for compatibility with a wide variety of payload types, including DNA, RNA and ribonucleoprotein complexes (RNPs). That flexibility could be important in a market where cell therapy developers are pursuing multiple engineering strategies depending on disease target, cell type and therapeutic mechanism.
The platform has also demonstrated utility across a range of applications, including CRISPR-based genome editing, transposon-driven cell engineering, and transient protein expression. This breadth suggests the collaboration is not narrowly focused on a single CAR-T workflow, but instead aims to build a broader non-viral engineering toolkit that could support many different types of cell therapy development programs.
Scalability is another major consideration. Both companies emphasized that their technologies have already shown the ability to support workflows from research through clinical manufacturing, an important point for developers who want to avoid switching platforms as programs mature. In the cell therapy space, changing core manufacturing technologies mid-development can create delays, add regulatory complexity and increase cost. A platform that can support the full continuum from preclinical work to commercial production may therefore offer a meaningful strategic advantage.
Companies position platform as a path toward safer and more commercially viable cell therapies
For MaxCyte, the partnership is closely tied to the growing need for cell therapy platforms that are not only scientifically robust, but also commercially realistic. Maher Masoud, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said cell therapy developers need solutions that are manufacturable, scalable and commercially viable if the field is to reach its full potential.
Masoud said the combination of MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation technology with VectorBuilder’s MiniVec platform could establish a new standard in non-viral gene delivery, one that improves cell quality, boosts manufacturing efficiency and provides developers with a more streamlined path from early research through commercialization. His comments reflect a broader industry concern that technical success alone is not enough in cell therapy; products must also be manufacturable at a cost and scale that supports market adoption.
VectorBuilder’s Dr. Bruce Lahn, founder and chief scientist, emphasized the complementary nature of the collaboration, describing it as an effort to create a next-generation platform for efficient, safe and scalable electroporation-based cell engineering. He pointed to applications such as CAR-T therapy as examples of where the combined platform could be particularly valuable.
Lahn also highlighted the fact that both companies bring significant GMP-compliant clinical development expertise, which could make the platform especially relevant for developers looking for a seamless path from clinical trials to commercialization. In addition to performance, he stressed the importance of cost of goods and price-per-dose economics, two issues that increasingly shape fundraising, development strategy and commercial planning in the cell therapy sector.
That focus on economics may prove just as important as the technical performance data. One of the major barriers to broader adoption of advanced cell therapies has been their cost and manufacturing complexity. If VectorBuilder and MaxCyte can demonstrate that their combined platform improves viability and expression while also lowering operational burdens and simplifying scale-up, it could offer a compelling alternative to existing viral and non-viral approaches.
Positioning for the next phase of cell therapy manufacturing
The partnership between VectorBuilder and MaxCyte reflects a broader trend in the cell therapy industry: the push to make highly sophisticated therapies easier to manufacture, safer to deliver and more financially sustainable. As the market evolves beyond early proof-of-concept programs and toward broader clinical and commercial deployment, enabling technologies like gene delivery systems are becoming central to the future of the field.
Rather than focusing solely on the therapeutic payload, developers and platform providers are increasingly trying to solve the underlying engineering and manufacturing challenges that determine whether a therapy can be produced consistently, affordably and at scale. In that context, the combination of MiniVec and Flow Electroporation represents an effort to rethink one of the most critical steps in the process—how genes are introduced into cells without compromising the cells themselves or creating unsustainable production burdens.
While the partnership is still in its early stages, the companies are clearly positioning the platform as a potential answer to long-standing bottlenecks in ex vivo cell engineering. If the early gains in viability and gene expression translate into broader manufacturing advantages across multiple cell therapy modalities, the collaboration could become a meaningful development for a sector that continues to search for safer, faster and more scalable ways to bring advanced therapies to patients.
For now, VectorBuilder and MaxCyte are betting that by combining plasmid innovation with advanced electroporation, they can help set a new benchmark for non-viral cell engineering—and in doing so, support the next generation of cell therapies from discovery through commercialization.
About VectorBuilder
VectorBuilder is a global leader in gene delivery technologies. As a trusted partner in thousands of labs and biotech/pharma companies around the world, VectorBuilder is a one-stop shop for the design, development, and optimization of gene delivery solutions from basic research to clinical applications. Its award-winning Vector Design Studio is a transformative innovation that allows researchers to easily design and order custom vectors online, freeing them from the tedious work of cloning and packaging vectors in the lab.
The global company boasts high-throughput vector production capacity, vast vector and component inventories, one-on-one CRO solutions that include advanced AAV capsid engineering capabilities, and state-of-the-art GMP manufacturing facilities. With leading R&D and CDMO capabilities, the VectorBuilder team strives to provide the most effective gene-delivery solutions and develop innovative tools for life sciences research and genetic medicine.
About MaxCyte
At MaxCyte®, we are committed to building better cells together. As a leading cell-engineering company, we are driving the discovery, development and commercialization of next-generation cell therapies. Our best-in-class Flow Electroporation® technology and SeQure™ gene editing risk assessment services enable high-performance cell engineering and rigorous evaluation of editing outcomes, supporting confidence in therapeutic development.
Supported by expert scientific, technical and regulatory guidance, our platform empowers researchers to engineer diverse cell types and payloads, accelerating the development of safe and effective treatments for human health. For more than 25 years, we’ve been advancing cell engineering, shaping the future of medicine.
