Plasticell Signs Deal With JCR Pharmaceuticals To Use Combicult ® Stem Cell Technology In Japan

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Stevenage, UK, 24 February 2014 -- Plasticell, the biotechnology company specializing in stem cell differentiation, has today announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement with JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. of Ashiya, Hyogo Pref., Japan, to discover custom stem cell culture media using its award-winning combinatorial stem cell technology, CombiCult®.

Under the terms of the agreement, Plasticell will use its stem cell expertise to work with JCR scientists, deploying CombiCult® to discover novel GMP-ready protocols for therapeutic applications. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“Plasticell’s core capability to provide customers with optimized serum- and xeno-free GMP-grade stem cell differentiation or expansion protocols, which exclude patented factors and contain small molecule substitutes, together with the knowledge we have accumulated from a decade of differentiating all types of stem cells into a multitude of different cell types, has great potential to enhance the competitiveness of the Japanese stem cell effort,“ remarked Dennis Saw, Chief Executive of Plasticell. “The attractiveness of our technology is evidenced by this timely collaboration with JCR, the leading Japanese pharma in the stem cell field.“

“Plasticell’s CombiCult® is a unique technology which enables us to speed up our R&D effort, potentially contributing to reducing cost, project risk and time to market for our products,“ commented Dr. Tachibana, General Manager at JCR’s Research Division.

About Plasticell and CombiCult®

Plasticell is a biotechnology company that has been handling and manipulating stem cells since 2002. It uses deep knowledge in stem cells along with proprietary tools, including its award-winning CombiCult®, to discover customized stem cell media which differentiate, expand, maintain or otherwise manipulate all types of stem cells.

The company’s proprietary technology, Combinatorial Cell Culture or CombiCult®, is used by its experienced stem cell scientists and allows testing of cell culture variables in millions of random combinations in the time it takes to perform a single differentiation/expansion experiment to discover optimal protocols for the differentiation and expansion of adult and pluripotent stem cells. Results are obtained in record time at a fraction of the cost of trial and error experimentation – each screen can produce many dozens of protocols which are ranked by optimality by powerful proprietary bioinformatics, Ariadne®. These protocols can be designed to contain or exclude components hence can be xeno-free, serum-free, GMP-compatible, free of patented components and include specific components such as small molecules.

In addition to discovering optimized stem cell differentiation protocols, CombiCult® can be used to produce high-value cell types and/or custom media for drug development and cell therapy applications, producing rare cell types, discovering and producing progenitor cells and increasing the yield of cell secretions.

Plasticell collaborates and forms strategic alliances with industry partners to produce high value cell types/lines and custom culture media for research, drug discovery and cell therapy applications.

For media enquiries, please contact Tristan Jervis on +44 (0) 207 203 6740 or e-mail: t.jervis@defacto.com

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