London, UK. 15th June 2012 -- Plasticell, the biotechnology company specialising in high throughput technologies for directed stem cell differentiation, has today announced that it has engaged Veritas Corporation of Tokyo as the exclusive distributor for all of its services and products, including CombiCult®, in Japan.
CombiCult® breaks the major bottleneck in stem cell research and development programmes – the discovery of optimised stem cell differentiation protocols. CombiCult® also allows scientists to develop custom cell culture media (e.g. GMP compatible stem cell expansion media for cell therapy), create high value cell lines for toxicity testing in the pharmaceutical/cosmetic/nutrition industries, and to increase yield and/or decrease cost of bioprocess manufacturing.
Japan is one of the leading countries in stem cell research, especially in the field of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). By making CombiCult® more accessible to the Japanese research community through an active presence with Veritas Corp., Plasticell hopes to reduce the cost & risk while significantly accelerating the stem cell research effort in Japan.
“Plasticell has a unique and powerful platform that indeed breaks the bottleneck of stem cell research. With their high-throughput system, CombiCult®, Plasticell is able to significantly reduce the cost of obtaining not just differentiation or expansion protocols, but optimized protocols. This also cuts many months, if not years, off a stem cell research program, reducing risk and allowing researchers to contemplate working on challenging cell types. We hope to deploy this important technology widely in Japan,” commented Mr. Shinsaku Iida, President of Veritas Corp. in Tokyo.
Dennis Saw, CEO of Plasticell added, “Japan is a very important market for Plasticell and we are pleased to have engaged Veritas Corp., an established and respected biotech goods and services distributor in Japan. We are excited to make CombiCult® more readily available to the Japanese stem cell research community, and are confident that CombiCult® can be used as a tool to the advantage of Japanese stem cell science.”
Plasticell and Veritas are currently exhibiting at the 2012 ISSCR in Yokohama. Please visit the Veritas stand no. 121.
Plasticell is also displaying 2 posters on Fridat 15th of June:
* Directed Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells into Functional Hepatocytes Using the Combinatorial Cell Culture Platform CombiCult® at location F-1111
*High Throughput Stem Cell Differentiation at location F-2260
About Plasticell and CombiCult®
Plasticell is a biotechnology company that specialises in using massively parallel screens to differentiate stem cells.
The company’s proprietary technology, Combinatorial Cell Culture or CombiCult®, allows testing of cell culture variables in millions of random combinations to discover optimal protocols for the differentiation and expansion of adult, and pluripotent stem cells. Results are obtained rapidly 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®. 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, improving yields and decreasing cost of goods for bio-processing.
For media enquiries: please contact Tristan Jervis on: +44 (0) 207 861 3019.
For more information visit the Plasticell website: www.plasticell.co.uk.
For technical enquiries please contact Dr Lilian Hook on 00 44 20 3384 8806 or 00 44 7811 168177 or email: lilian@plasticell.co.uk
About Veritas Corporation. (Tokyo)
VERITAS is strategic marketing company to bring state of the art products in Life Science from overseas to Japanese Market. VERITAS distributes unique, technically sophisticated products versus “me too” products or commodities.
The strong scientific and technical knowledge of our sales, marketing and technical support staff allows us to effectively represent complex and innovative products that are at the cutting edge of technology.
We are committed to providing excellent customer service and knowledgeable technical support.
By focusing on quality versus quantity, we can maintain up-to-date knowledge and expertise on the product lines we represent. Our customers routinely draw upon this scientific knowledge and technical expertise, which has allowed us to build strong relationships and a loyal customer base. In addition, we always strive to meet our customers’ needs and exceed their expectations.
For media enquiries, please contact Tristan Jervis or Alex Heeley on: +44 (0) 207 861 3019; e-mail: t.jervis@defacto.com.
For more information:
Web site: http://www.veritastk.co.jp/english/
Contact email: veritas_contact@veritastk.co.jp
Tel: 81(3)3593-3211
