The Technology Strategy Board will provide a grant of approximately £0.9m towards the project as part of its Regenerative Medicine Programme.
Dennis Saw, Chief Executive of Plasticell said, “We are pleased to be able to contribute our longstanding expertise in directed differentiation of stem cells to this multidisciplinary team comprising leading groups in the field. The research will address a critical issue in human stem cell research, with downstream applications in regenerative medicine and cellular therapies.”
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. 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 the Technology Strategy Board
The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org
About Cellzome
Cellzome is a world leader in chemoproteomics, transforming the sciences of epigenetics and signal transduction into novel drug candidates in inflammatory diseases and oncology. The Company maintains the highest levels of scientific expertise and has active collaborations with the foremost academic laboratories around the world. Cellzome’s technologies work with native proteins in a physiological setting to discover small molecule drugs targeting protein complexes that underlie diseases. The Company has a track record in delivering significant collaborations with top pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis. Cellzome is a privately-held, international, company located in Heidelberg, Germany and Cambridge, UK employing about 100 people. For more information please visit: www.cellzome.com
About Neusentis (Pfizer)
About the University of Sheffield
With nearly 25,000 students from 125 countries, the University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading and largest universities. A member of the Russell Group, it has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards for its exceptional performance in research, teaching, access and business performance. In addition, the University has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007).
These prestigious awards recognise outstanding contributions by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield also boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and many of its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence around the world. The University’s research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.
The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. Its partnership with Leeds and York Universities in the White Rose Consortium has a combined research power greater than that of either Oxford or Cambridge.
