New company formed to supply stem cells to drug manufacturers

A new Cambridge company, named DefiniGEN, has been formed to supply stem cells to the drug discovery and regenerative medicine industries.

The team, which developed the technique to produce liver cells from skin cells, is a spin-out company from the University of Cambridge.

Potential remedial applications of stem cells, like regenerating damaged organs or tissues, have created a lot of interest over the last ten years; however the most direct impact on human health by stem cells will probably come from their utilisation in the development of new drugs.

Reprogramming cells from patients' skin and producing stem cells has changed human stem cell research.

These cells, which are known as human induced pluripotent stem cells (hIPSC), can be differentiated into nearly any cell type. This allows there to be a ready source of human cells for testing new therapies.

DefiniGEN is based on the research of Dr Tamir Rashid, Dr Ludovic Vallier and Professor Roger Pedersen of the Anne McLaren Laboratory of Regenerative Medicine.

They developed the technology to make human liver cells (hepatocytes) in an extremely reproducible and scalable way for the use of commercial industries.

Removing toxins from the body and metabolising drugs is the liver's main job, therefore it is frequently affected by toxic compounds.

The majority of drug candidates fail at demonstrating that a new drug is free from liver poisoning and this is a key test in the development process.

This means that a lot of time and money will be lost in the clinical phase of development, so identifying toxic drugs as quickly as possible is essential to the effectiveness and safety of the drug discovery practice, explained Dr Vallier.

"This is a technology whose time has come. Cambridge has more expertise in the area of stem cells than perhaps anywhere else on earth, and now we are starting to see promising commercial opportunities which build on that expertise," said Marcus Yeo, DefiniGEN's chief executive officer.

Posted by Ben Evans