Biotech Firm Licenses Stem Cell Re-Programming Technology

Angiocrine Bioscience, Inc., a privately held biotech company located in New York City, has licensed the rights to a new technology developed by a team of researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College.

The new technology provides a means of converting a patient’s own vascular cells (endothelial cells) directly into blood stem cells. The company explains that endothelial cells are acquired from a biopsied piece of skin and are then “educated” on a bed of VeraVecTM cells which are proprietary to Angiocrine Bioscience. According to the company’s press release, these treated cells form multipotent blood cells that are capable of producing red cells that carry oxygen, white cells that provide immunity, and platelets to prevent bleeding.

Shahin Rafii, M.D., director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute, professor of medicine, genetic medicine and reproductive medicine, and a founder of Angiocrine Bioscience reported on this advance in the July 2 issue of Nature. His hope is that his team’s research would lead to therapies that originate from their own cells for blood disorder patients.

Rafii said, “We hope that our method will offer the first safe technology to treat a wide spectrum of serious disorders. The VeraVecTM cells form a nurturing niche for the survival and growth of the reprogrammed blood cells, similar to what happens developmentally during blood production. A particularly important aspect of this study was that the reprogrammed cells engrafted in the bone marrow when implanted into rodents and morphed into the various types of blood cells.”