Plasticell wins £1.6 million funding

09-Feb-2015 - United Kingdom

Plasticell has announced that Innovate UK has made a further investment in a therapeutic programme utilising CombiCult®, the high throughput stem cell technology designed to solve bottlenecks in regenerative medicine development.

Innovate UK will provide a grant of approximately £1.3 million to a research consortium led by Plasticell for a project entitled ‘Ex-vivo expansion of cord blood and bone marrow stem cells”. The consortium includes the University of Oxford and the Cell Therapy Catapult.

While bone marrow is currently the primary source of stem cells for haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), donor cells have to be immunologically matched to the recipent, resulting in demand far outstripping supply. In contrast, donated cord blood is plentiful and contains a high proportion of stem cells with a lower risk of tissue rejection despite immunological mismatch. HSCT from cord blood is currently limited by the low number of total cells present in each donated unit.

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