Bracco Imaging is entering the cell therapy manufacturing market with a new microbubble-based approach designed to replace traditional magnetic beads for cell selection and activation, the company has announced.
The company, best known for contrast agents and imaging technologies, said it is leveraging its lipid-based microbubble platform – clinically validated through 25 years of use in contrast-enhanced ultrasound – to streamline upstream steps in cell therapy production. Bracco’s microbubbles are intended to provide a bead-free alternative for cell enrichment and activation, reducing cellular stress and eliminating residual materials that can complicate downstream processing.
According to the company, the technology enables both positive and negative selection strategies and can be used sequentially to support multistep enrichment workflows. Bracco positioned this flexibility as a potential advantage for developers seeking to isolate harder-to-purify immune cell subsets beyond standard CD3+ selection approaches commonly used in T-cell therapy manufacturing.
“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, in a statement. He added that the company aims to provide a cleaner, scalable option for cell selection that can expand what is possible for developers and platform providers.
Bracco executives also emphasized the technology’s “zero-footprint” concept, in which the separation vector dissolves rather than remaining attached to cells. Sophie He, vice president of cell therapy and head of M&A and partnering, said the company is targeting a major pain point in manufacturing: the limits of simple enrichment when developers require more precise control of cell populations. By minimizing perturbation of intracellular signaling pathways, Bracco believes the approach can offer a cleaner starting point for genetic modification, activation, and expansion.
Bracco said the microbubbles can be removed by “popping” them or leaving them undisturbed for a short period, offering a simplified workflow compared with bead-based processes that often require additional removal steps.
To support commercialization, Bracco is building a dedicated cell therapy team focused on partnerships, technology evaluation, and platform development. The company highlighted collaborations with CellBri to co-develop a flexible closed cell selection system, as well as Limula and experts from the University of Fribourg to develop an automated alternative to conventional bead-based selection and activation. Bracco said it expects to share additional updates later this year as early-access partners generate performance data across different use cases.
Manufacturing will take place at a new GMP-compliant facility in Geneva, where Bracco plans to produce the microbubble product at scale.
Bracco will preview the technology at Advanced Therapies Week 2026 in San Diego, where it will exhibit in the Innovation Zone at Stand P6. The company is also scheduled to present “Using Universal Microbubbles to Optimize T-cell Selection and Activation” on Tuesday, Feb. 10, from 1:00 to 1:15 p.m.
Bracco said the platform is designed to be open and integration-ready, compatible with automated and closed manufacturing systems. The company expects the technology to be available for clinical use in 2027.
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