Kyoto Univ’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Sumitomo Chemical, and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Commence Joint Research on Producing Higher-Quality iPS Cells for Clinical Use
Dec. 21, 2018
Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (Sumitomo Chemical), and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd. (Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma) today announced that they have started joint research on producing higher-quality iPS cells for clinical use.
Since fiscal 2013, CiRA has been advancing the project “iPS Cell Stock for Regenerative Medicine*”, in which, at its cell processing center (CPC) for clinical-grade cell production “Facility for iPS Cell Therapy (FiT) ”, CiRA has been producing a stock of iPS cells used for regenerative medicine.
Meanwhile, for the first clinical trial in Japan of the iPS cell-based treatment for Parkinson’s disease, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma has established a master cell bank by expanding a stock of iPS cells, and using iPS cells from the master cell bank, CiRA has been producing dopaminergic progenitors, the transplanted cells in this treatment, at FiT.
In this way, CiRA and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma have built a steady track record of production of cell products for clinical use.
For promoting the use of iPS cell-based cell therapies, it is essential to produce high-quality and uniform iPS cells on a large scale stably. In stringently controlled CPCs, however, it is not necessarily easy to reproduce technology developed in laboratories.
An important issue, therefore, is to develop and validate technologies in CPCs, which are applicable to commercial production.
To resolve this challenge, Sumitomo Chemical and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, appreciating the high CPC controlling capability of FiT, which has succeeded in producing Japan’s first iPS cell stock and iPS cell-derived cells for the clinical trial, have launched this joint research with CiRA.
https://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp/news/detail/20181221.html
https://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp/english/news/detail/20181221e.html