Cellular Dynamics Awarded U.S. Patent

Cellular Dynamics International has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) awarded the company Patent No. 8,815,585 on the automated production of human pluripotent stem cells, including induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

CDI’s products and services are based on iPSC technology. This patent has broad-reaching effects, covering research, cellular therapy development and stem cell banking.

Key points:
• U.S. Patent No. 8,815,585 covers the automated production of human pluripotent stem cells, including induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
• Large-scale applications, such as cellular therapeutic development as well as stem cell banking, require automation for parallel processing of samples from many donors. In addition, the patent broadly covers automated iPSC culturing without the use of feeder cells or the addition of serum to culture media, factors important to cellular therapy development in a cGMP environment.
• This patent joins an IP portfolio of over 800 patents awarded to, pending or in-licensed by CDI, thus providing additional confidence to customers and investors that CDI is amassing important IP and strengthening its IP portfolio.
• CDI manufactures human iPSCs and differentiated cells at industrial scale and to tight specifications. Current iCell® offerings include cardiomyocytes, cardiac progenitor cells, neurons, dopaminergic neurons, astrocytes, hepatocytes, endothelial cells, hematopoietic progenitor cells and skeletal myoblasts. MyCell® offerings include iPSCs reprogrammed from a customer-sourced sample, genetically engineered iPSCs and iCell products under development made from MyCell iPSCs.
• The patent positions CDI as the leading supplier of choice for researchers needing a reliable and high quality supply of human cells for research, cellular therapy and stem cell banking.

Bob Palay, chief executive officer of CDI, said, “CDI has distinguished itself as the leader of human cell manufacturing based on our industrialized process of manufacturing iPSCs and differentiated cells. This patent is further evidence of our continued leadership in the field. We believe that automation is critical to both large-scale manufacture of human stem cells and differentiated cell types, and their application, especially in cellular therapeutics. The issuance of this patent helps assure our customers that CDI will be able to provide them access to manufactured human cells in the quantity, quality, purity and diversity that meets their drug discovery, stem cell banking and cell therapy research and development needs.”

Chris Parker, chief commercial officer of CDI, said, “CDI is using automated production to execute on the more than 3,000 patient samples associated with our CIRM grant and Coriell subcontract. This patent uniquely enables CDI to process multiple cell lines simultaneously as needed to create new stem cell banks or to expand existing ones. It also facilitates making disease cell lines available to researchers within a relatively short timeframe.”