Scottish Biomedical
Derivation of a human embryonic stem cell line for the development of drugs for human disease (R0182)
Licence holder: Dr Laura Jackson
Lay summary:
The aim of the project is to derive a human embryonic stem cell line from surplus embryos for use in drug discovery for human disease. The use of human embryonic stem cells in the development of treatments will improve the selection of lead candidate drugs and reduce adverse outcomes in later stages of the drug development process. Thus, the use of human embryonic stem cells will increase the speed and number of higher quality drugs reaching sufferers of a wide range of serious diseases.
Differentiation of human embryonic stem cells allows the generation of large numbers of cell types such as neurons, hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes. These types of cells are essential for improvements in early efficacy and toxicity screening of compounds to identify potential drugs for development for pharmaceutical companies. Primary human cell types can not be obtained in sufficient amounts for these purposes hence researchers rely on the use of commercically available cell lines which are not clinically relevant.
The development of drugs as a result is slowed down significantly as many drugs fail further into the process and in-vivo models are required to assess performance more physiologically. The ability to produce bulk amounts of differentiated human cell types from human embryonic stem cells will provide an environment close to the human system for drug screening. This will overcome costly, time-consuming and labour intensive primary cellular studies and will reduce the need for animal experimentation.
The use of an embryonic stem cell line also allows more superior assay system technologies to be built than could be with primary cells. Human embryonic stem cell can be manipulated prior to differentiation to over-express target genes which can be screened against, to more easily and effectively identify clinical candidate drugs.
Scottish Biomedical are experts in the development of complex drug discovery systems with scientists skilled in the areas of assay development, cell biology, chemistry, drug discovery, molecular biology and pharmacology. With stem cell expertise from sister company StemCell Services, Scottish Biomedical are confident in their abilities and on the success of this project to significantly impact the drug discovery world. By derivation of a human embryonic stem cell line we will have a source of relevant cells that can be used in innovative and advanced technologies to increase the amounts of safer drugs produced for human diseases.
Page last updated: 19 March 2009