Plasticell to collaborate with UCB to develop small-molecule drugs
12 Nov 2010
Stem cell technology company Plasticell has announced the
signing of a collaboration agreement with biopharmaceutical company,
UCB.
Under the terms of the agreement, UCB will supply
Plasticell with drug compound libraries with known biological targets.
Plasticell will screen these using its award-winning CombiCult
technology to discover new cell signalling pathways involved in stem
cell biology, including tissue regeneration.
"Using drugs to
investigate and direct stem cell differentiation is attracting
substantial interest from the pharmaceuticals sector. We are delighted
that UCB has chosen us as their partner in this novel program, combining
proprietary compound libraries from pharma with our patent-protected,
high-throughput stem cell screening technology that accelerates
discovery research,” commented Dr Yen Choo, CEO of Plasticell’
Plasticell’s unique ability to multiplex experiments will be utilized to
test compound libraries in parallel on a broad variety of stem cells,
including human embryonic, neural and mesenchymal stem cells.
Furthermore, the collaboration will take advantage of Plasticell’s
second generation CombiCult platform, featuring novel algorithms that
assist experimental design and downstream data mining when
simultaneously screening hundreds of compounds.
All screening
will be conducted using serum- and growth factor- free cell culture
media, enabling biological function to be more easily elucidated for
every hit.
Dr Jey Jeyakumar, Plasticell Senior Scientist,
remarked: “We expect some very interesting outcomes from the synergy
between annotated chemistry and multiplexed stem cell screening. The
screens will rapidly reveal new uses for well characterized compounds in
directing stem cell differentiation, and will yield proprietary
components for lower cost and superior performance stem cell culture
media.”
Dr Matthew Hickling, Senior Medical Advisor at UCB
commented: “We think this approach will prove to be a highly successful
technique for applying well characterised compounds in discovery
research and potentially in future cell therapies. Moreover,
regenerative medicine is not limited to the use of stem cells as
therapeutic agents: compounds that influence the fate of stem cells will
have multiple applications and we are pleased to be working with
Plasticell who are at the cutting edge in this field.”
In 2009,
Plasticell announced a pioneering collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK) to test the effect of model regenerative drugs in screens designed
to discover novel compounds for regenerative medicine. Using its
CombiScreen platform, Plasticell was able to configure screens that
clearly detected the regenerative activity of the test compounds.