London: 13 February 2012 -- Plasticell, the biotechnology company specialising in high throughput technologies for directed stem cell differentiation, today announced that patents for its combinatorial cell culture platform technology, CombiCult™, have been granted in the USA and Japan. Patents covering CombiCult™ have now been issued in Europe, USA, Japan, Australia and Singapore.
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.
“Plasticell’s proprietary technology breaks the major bottleneck in current stem cell research. Having followed CombiCult™'s development for almost a decade, I am delighted that the importance of this revolutionary technology is now being recognised through multiple industry awards and patents”, commented Sir Martin Evans FRS, a founding member of Plasticell’s Scientific Advisory Board and recipient of the Nobel prize for the isolation of embryonic stem cells.
Dennis Saw, CEO of Plasticell added, “Since 2002, Plasticell has continually innovated and expanded intellectual property coverage to secure its leading position in the stem cell space. Granted patents in the USA, Europe and Japan mean that the CombiCult™ process, which underlies many of our technologies, is now protected in all the major biotech markets which we operate in.”
About CombiCult™ & Plasticell
Plasticell is a biotechnology company that specialises in using massively parallel screens to differentiate stem cells.
The company’s proprietary technology, CombiCult™, allows testing of cell culture variables in millions of 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. 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 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
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For media enquiries: please contact Tristan Jervis on: +44 (0) 207 861 3019 or e-mail: t.jervis@defacto.com
