Golf? Gin rummy? A love of Janet Evanovich novels? Perhaps. We don't know about any of those things any of which they might have in common. What we do know is that each of these stem cell notables is associated with a privately owned, induced pluripotency oriented, stem cell company.
Jamie Thomson and his top associates from the University of Wisconsin formed Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) to provide drug screening and toxicity testing products based on 'breakthrough induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology'.
With the possible exception of Shinya yamanaka, whom the new merger of iZumi Bio and Pierian, called iPerian, lists as having a laboratory at Kyoto University with which the new company has formed a "collaboration," each of these stem cell research notables is venturing forth toward the possibility of private sector returns as research moves toward achieving a scalable stem cell product or actual stem cell therapies.
Recently, Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) and Roche announced a significant expansion of their existing agreement to test drug development candidates for their potential to cause cardiotoxicity, or damage to heart tissue. CDI and Roche have been working together for the past year, using CDI’s stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, to see if Roche’s drug candidates cause damage to heart tissue. The two-year collaboration aims to enhance drug safety testing in order to bring promising therapies to patients faster.
The idea behind CDI's creation was Jamie Thomson's, the man who created the first embryonic stem cell lines in 1998 and independently of Shinya Yamanaka pursuaded a human skin cell into an embryonic-like state in 2007. CDI is Jamie Thomson's financial brass ring; a chance to gain from his ideas in the medical market place.
Izumi and Perian, both private companies, have merged to become a single biopharmaceutical company "focused on the industrialization of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technology with the mission of creating new therapeutics through cellular reprogramming and directed differentiation of patient cells." All of the above principles not associated with CDI are affiliated with the newly merged company now known as iPerian.
iPierian is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Highland Capital Partners, MPM Capital and FinTech Global Capital. The initial focus of the company is in neurodegeneration, particularly spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease as well as in cardiovascular disease, where iPierian has a collaboration with The Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease.
iPierian plans to enhance its partnership efforts to further expand into metabolic diseases. The company recently announced a formal collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University to develop and improve methods of deriving iPS cell lines in order to advance iPS cell technology.
Here's what iPerian says it's about:
Induced pluripotent stem cells are believed to be able to grow indefinitely in culture and to differentiate into many cell types, iPS cells have great potential for disease research, preclinical drug testing and cell-based therapy. iPierian’s approach places the patient at the forefront of the drug discovery process, thereby reducing drug development time and increasing the probability of success for drug candidates. iPierian plans to use precise human disease models to find new molecular targets and develop proprietary therapeutic small molecule or biologic drugs for its own pipeline to treat specific diseases.
And CDI:
We're working with scientists worldwide to develop and deploy a number of cell lineages derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) as well as a wide range of screening assays and services to aid pharmaceutical development. Currently CDI provides cardiac toxicity drug testing services, including GLP and non-GLP hERG channel electrophysiological assays as well as action potential and cytotoxicity screens using cardiomyocytes. The company is developing additional cell types from iPS cells, including hematopoietic cells (mast and CD34+ cells, megakaryocytes, and red blood cells), hepatocytes, neural cells, adipocytes, and more.
Obviously the promise of induced pluripotent stem cells is taken very seriously by this cast of stem cell heavyweights and their financiers. Jamie Thomson has made his view known that iPS cells will have the greatest impact in drug testing and development. It will be interesting to watch the affect these companies have on those players in our Stem Cell Sector that intend to make a living supplying cell cultures to other researchers.
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