Cellular Dynamics international (CDI), founded by Jamie Thomson and colleagues from the U. of Wisconsin, recently reported generating pluripotent stem cells from very small volumes of ordinary human blood samples. CDI is privately held. Its stated mission is to "provide drug screening and toxicity testing products based on breakthrough induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology,"
Once the difficulty of current approaches to inducing pluripotency is overcome (reducing time and cost while producing high quality scalability and safety), this development suggests the possibility of a readily obtainable source of pluripotent stem cells from the millions of blood samples in storage at repositories and healthcare institutions worldwide.
“Industry’s challenge was to reliably create iPS cells from a commonly available and easily accessible tissue source and we focused on stored human peripheral blood samples,” said Chris Kendrick-Parker, chief commercial officer of CDI. “Generating pluripotent stem cells from small volumes of blood—either freshly collected from a patient or accessed from blood storage repositories, provides a convenient source for generating patient-specific stem cells that are valuable research tools and may one day be used as a cellular therapy to treat disease.”
Emile Nuwaysir, chief operations officer of CDI said, “The ability to use common tissue repositories to create iPS cells from donors with known medical history enables us to provide the pharmaceutical industry with a cell portfolio representing individual biology, disease models, retrospective analysis and ethnic diversity. This is the first step in paving the way for large-scale processing and industrialization of iPS cells.”
On the 'large-scale processing and industrialization of iPS cells” front, Cellular Dynamics and Roche recently announced an expansion of their existing agreement to test drug development candidates for potential to cause cardiotoxicity, or damage to heart tissue. The two-year collaboration aims to enhance drug safety testing in order to bring promising therapies to patients faster.
Commenting on the expanded agreement, Kendrick-Parker said, “CDI well understands the limitations associated with current in vitro testing models that do not appropriately reflect the target cell population and physiology. Our iPSC technology overcomes these obstacles and offers the promise of generating differentiated cell types, even personalized cell types, from virtually any genetic background. We believe iPSC technology will play a pivotal role as drug discovery and development practices continue to evolve toward personalized therapeutics, and we are excited to be working with a world-class organization such as Roche in this endeavour.”
Adapted from the Cellular Dynamics International announcement.
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