Article Excerpt:
TWST: What is Stem Cell Innovations?Dr. Kelly: We're a cell biology company. We were formed in February of this year from three smaller companies - my previous company Amphioxus Cell Technologies, another company called Plurion, and a public shell called Interferon Sciences. We merged those three in February of this year to form Stem Cell Innovations with the idea of using cell biology to address a variety of areas that we feel are emerging fields in both the pharmaceutical industry and in medicine. Cells are the basic structure of life. Cells are the things that live and die and so pharmaceuticals and medicines operate at the level of cell. Amphioxus Cell Technologies was based on doing human liver cell biology, using human liver cells to support drug development. The liver is one the main metabolic organs of the body, so it is one of the first things that drugs see when they are absorbed through the intestine, so the liver has a significant effect on whether a drug has a very short life, whether it builds up in the blood stream, whether it kills off the cells, etc. The liver is central to drug metabolism. Two years ago we decided to expand with the idea that, by using stem cells, we could generate other cell types that we could plug in - such as heart, lung, liver, and kidney - in the same infrastructure of assays, robotics, and so on, that we had developed for the liver and really do extensive in vitro testing of drugs before they go on the market. This way, things like the Vioxx recall and so on, where unknown, unforeseen toxicities show up after drugs get out on to the market, could be understood and eliminated beforehand by doing extensive testing of cells in a dish rather than in a person. So that was really the emphasis for acquiring Plurion and forming Stem Cell Innovations - to develop stem cells. Stem cells can become any cell type in the body. Stem cells by their nature can become heart, lung, liver, kidney, etc. We are now using those stem cells to generate those different types of cells, as I mentioned, and using them to test new drugs.
Tickers included in this excerpt: SCLL
TWST Newsletter
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.