Science

Productive preclinical and clinical application of human embryonic cell lines (ES) is hampered by cumbersome and complex culture methods. These include the necessary use of feeder layers. Stem Cell Innovations (SCI) is able to overcome these hurdles by establishing human pluripotent cells, called PluriCells^TM, from fetal gonadal tissue without feeder layers using semi-defined conditions. Because these cells grow directly on cell culture plastic they can be passaged using simple trypsin-EDTA procedures. They are readily cloned and exhibit good transfection efficiencies using nucleofection.

SCI's proprietary collection of human PluriCell lines display all of the usual characteristics of pluripotent stem cells such as:

• Expression of Oct4, Nanog, alkaline phosphatase, SSEA1, TRA 1-60, and TRA 1-81.
• They are uniformly SSEA4 negative.
• They maintain a normal karyotype after extended passaging under the defined conditions.
• They exhibit the ability to form multiple differentiated cell types either through embryoid body formation or through treatment with various hormonal treatments in situ.

One of the disease areas in need of large scale, pure cultures of human primary cells is neurodegeneration. SCI has selected neurodegenerative disorders as a key area of opportunity for its cell platform. An example of a neuronal cell type generated from SCI PluriCell's is given below. Other human cell-types that are under development include hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes.