Stem Cell Innovations And Twente University To Evaluate Bone Forming Capacity Of PluriCells
Houston & Enschede, Netherlands - Stem Cell Innovations, Inc. announced today that the Company has initiated a collaboration with the University of Twente (the Netherlands) to explore the bone forming properties of PluriCells. Under the material transfer agreement, the University of Twente will get access to Stem Cell Innovations (SCI) proprietary human pluripotent stem cell technology and know-how. In return SCI will receive a nonexclusive license to intellectual property generated with the PluriCells.
“The team of professor van Blitterswijk is one of the world’s leading academic groups in the study of stem cell derived bone and cartilage formation. This former IsoTis in-house orthobiology research group has developed a comprehensive set of robust in vitro and in vivo models in which the PluriCells will be tested”, said Stem Cell Innovations CEO Dr. James Kelly. “SCI is impressed that their science is very application driven, with van Blitterswijk as founder of several biotech companies, including IsoTis, where he was CEO”.
“We are very pleased to work with the PluriCells provided by Stem Cell Innovations”, said Prof. Dr. Clemens van Blitterswijk. “SCI has developed a unique cell culture system that makes culturing of human pluripotent stem cells much more straightforward. I expect that our stem cell research team, headed by Dr. Jan de Boer, will extrapolate recent results with murine stem cells to human bone tissue engineering using PluriCells”.
Stem Cell Innovations recently disclosed it has produced multiple lines of human pluripotent stem cells. These PluriCell lines can be efficiently cultured in tissue culture plates without the use of feeder layers and can be efficiently differentiated into multiple cell-types, having the potential to aid in drug discovery and development.
PluriCells are a type of pluripotent stem cell isolated from fetal tissue that have the ability to become all cell types of the body. Because they are developed from fetal germ cells, not viable embryos, they are eligible to be used in any NIH funded laboratory. Stem cells derived from fetal germ cells were explicitly excluded from the Presidential ban by the Department of Health and Human Services guidance document of March 19, 2002, that laid out what type of stem cells could and could not be used in Federally funded research.
