Technological search of patents for the identification of devices with potential use in Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) research

Abstract

Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) is a type of adoptive cell therapy that addresses the challenges associated with cancer treatment. In this approach, T cells from a patient's tumor are harvested and stimulated to activate and expand them. Once a significant number of these cells have been generated, and reintroduced into the patient's body, where they can effectively recognize and eliminate cancer cells. However, conducting research in this field whit various challenges, including limited access to necessary technological devices for TILs isolation and expansion. To address this issue, a search was conducted to identify technological devices that could be used in adoptive cell therapy, using patent exploration strategies. The search began by identifying the best-known patent databases platforms and selecting four to explore. Over 300,000 documents were initially found, but applying various filters to reduce the number of relevant documents to approximately less than 500. The information obtained was then cross-referenced and analyzed to identify the top some technologies with the highest potential for use in the isolation and expansion of TILs. Finally, the interfaces of the search platforms were compared to identify their differences.