Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology Named Gold Winner

The Wall Street Journal 2011 Technology Innovation Awards are determined by a panel of independent judges who evaluated significant innovations that occurred in 2010.  Six hundred and five applicants competed for the award in 16 categories.  Of these, the panel chose 35 winners and runners-up.

“Medical research has been challenged by the lack of access to a consistent supply of human cells, such as heart or brain cells,” said Dr. James Thomson, CDI founder and chief scientific officer.  “Research today employs proxies, such as animal cells, tumor cell lines or cadaveric tissue, none of which truly reflect human biology.  I founded CDI based on my desire to make pluripotent stem cells and human tissue cells widely available to accelerate discoveries in human health and biological research. CDI’s production technology and capacity provide this access, enabling us to manufacture human material from anyone. CDI has overcome the scalability challenges, mass producing industrial quantities of human cells in high quality and purity.”

CDI has developed a proprietary manufacturing process in which cells isolated from a doctor’s office standard blood draw from virtually anyone can be reprogrammed into that individual’s personal pluripotent stem cell line.  CDI can then differentiate these stem cells into any cell type in the human body in industrial quantity, quality and purity so that scientists have a consistent supply of human cells from specific individuals.  Two human cell products, iCell® Cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) and iCell Endothelial Cells (blood vessel cells), have been launched over the past two years, with neurons and liver cells already available in early access collaborations with researchers worldwide.

“CDI is the first company to utilize stem cell technology to manufacture the vast quantities of high quality stem cells and tissue cells required to better understand human biology, revolutionize the drug discovery process, and develop cell-based therapies to treat human diseases,” said Robert Palay, chairman of the board and CDI chief executive officer.  “We are honored that The Wall Street Journal’s panel of independent judges recognized our company as a breakthrough innovator in human medicine and biotechnology.”