The Institute Announces New Stem Cell Biobank Partnership to Accelerate Drug Discovery

 

January 8, 2013

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John Paul II Medical Research Institute (JP2MRI), a stem cell biotech company, and the non-profit Cellular Engineering Technologies Inc. (CET) announce a partnership to develop a private stem cell biobank. CET, a biomanufacturer of human stem cells, is collaborating with the JP2MRI to create over 5,000 patient and disease-specific stem cell lines and other human cell lines to advance drug discovery, offer personalized medicine, and biomanufacturing. These cell lines are derived from adult sources and do not include embryonic stem cells.

 

A stem cell biobank will help overcome the greatest obstacle to offering personalized medicine and will accelerate the search for effective treatments. It will do so by enabling drug testing on patient specific stem cells, in contrast to the currently used models involving animal testing and clinical trials that are vastly more expensive and time consuming. The biobank stem cell lines will serve as models to better predict the outcome of drug therapy in patients and dramatically advance research to bring new treatments to market sooner and at less cost.

 

The JP2MRI and CET partnership will eliminate the barriers that typically impact government and academic biobanks because stem cell donations will come directly from patients recruited from private practice doctors and private hospitals. The Institute has launched its Give Cures program that has created a network of doctors in several private clinics and hospitals around the country to recruit patients to procure tissue to create the stem cell lines.

 

Download the news release to read the story.