Robert Umek

INCELL Pioneering the World’s First Effective Cell Therapy for #ALS - https://lnkd.in/g64wfbkS San Antonio, Texas, July 25, 2024 – ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is defined by the ALS Association (als.org) as a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. ALS symptoms vary and patients may lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe. There is no cure. The Mayo Clinic reports (mayoclinic.org) that no treatments can reverse ALS damage, but they may slow the progression of disease symptoms or help prevent complications. INCELL is committed to tackling innovative ALS therapy. INCELL Corporation’s Chief Science Officer and ALS Project Manager, Dr. Mary Pat Moyer says “Our INCELL team brought together our 31 years’ experience and leveraged our deep scientific, medical, and clinical knowledge of human cells and biomanufacturing. The complexity of the ALS disease, its self-destructive autoimmunity, and its damage to multiple body functions, led us to think that combinations of cell therapies might help ALS patients. We thought that bringing together INCELL’s banked stem cells, which can stimulate neural and tissue repair, combined with a patient’s regulatory immune cells might reduce inflammation, restore immune system balance, and lead to patient improvements. We were right! INCELL plans to expand cell therapies to more patients in more clinical trials while providing a business model for at-home and close-to-home care, with tools for at-home monitoring, while considering the needs of individual patients and their caregivers.” As stated by Dr. Peter Edenhoffer, INCELL’s Clinical Investigator for ALS cell therapy studies and a practicing neurologist: “I had hoped to learn important information from doing this clinical study, but my experience made me skeptical about outcomes, since no ALS patient’s clinical condition has been improved by any ALS therapy. Now, we have seen many significant, quantified ALS patient improvements after these effective cell therapies. My enthusiasm is now very high for using these unique cell therapies to treat more patients with ALS, other neural diseases, and trauma.” Read more at: https://lnkd.in/g64wfbkS #neurodegenerative #celltherapy #advancedtherapy

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Changing Dynamics in Umbilical Cord Blood and Tissue Banking - https://lnkd.in/eHykY4ub Cord blood is the blood that remains in the umbilical cord after the delivery of a newborn. It is a rich source of stem cells and immune system cells. During cord blood banking, these cells are isolated and cryopreserved for future use. The cells are collected from the two arteries and the vein which run along the length of the umbilical cord. The Wharton’s jelly is a gelatinous tissue that composes the umbilical cord, which also contains valuable therapeutic cells such as MSCs. Although cord blood storage emerged as a commercial service in the early 1990s, cord tissue storage didn’t emerge as a commercial service until 2008, when a Taiwanese company, HealthBanks Biotech Company Ltd., began offering the service making it the first company worldwide to do so. HealthBaby Biotech (Hong Kong) Co., Limited, a Hong Kong based company subsequently launched the service in 2009. Hong Kong-based CRYOLIFE company Ltd., added the service in 2009 as well. For placental banking, LifebankUSA Inc. initiated the service in the U.S. when it launched placental blood storage in 2006 and placental tissue storage in 2011. In September 2017, Americord Registry became the second U.S. cord blood bank to provide offering placental tissue banking. On April 17, 2023, the U.S. FDA also approved the world’s first expanded cord blood cell therapy (Omisirge). This was a landmark moment because numerous companies have been pursuing this goal for years. Omisirge is being developed by Gamida Cell Ltd. as an allogeneic cord blood cell therapy to speed up the recovery of white blood cells in cancer patients. Today, 80% of the global cord blood market is controlled by a handful of the world’s largest cord blood banking operators. Large market competitors include: Global Cord Blood Corporation (GCBC), Cord Blood Registry (owned by CooperSurgical), Polish Stem Cells Bank (PBKM)/ FamiCord Group, ViaCord, Cryo-Cell International, Cordlife Group Limited, Vcanbio Cell & Gene Engineering Corporation, LifeCell International Pvt.Ltd, CryoHoldco Biotech and Medipost. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/gqjSN9Mx #cordblood #cordbloodbanking #stemcell

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Organizations Who are Conducting Human Trials with iPSC-Derived Cellular Therapeutics - https://lnkd.in/gE3uiwby Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are a type of stem cell that can be generated directly from adult cells. They were first developed in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka and his team. iPS cells are engineered by reprogramming adult cells, such as skin cells, to revert to a pluripotent state, meaning they have the ability to differentiate into any cell type in the body. This reprogramming is typically achieved by introducing a combination of specific genes or gene factors into the adult cells, which resets their developmental clock. At the forefront of this mission is Cynata Therapeutics Ltd. (ASX: CYP). Cynata is a clinical-stage regenerative medicine company specializing in stem cell therapeutics that has a proprietary technology for manufacturing induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Of course, FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics, Inc has a 10.01% ownership stake in Cynata Therapeutics, so it deserves indirect credit for progressing iPSC-derived therapeutics in human trials as well. Another company that is progressing iPSC-derived cellular therapeutics into clinical trials is Fate Therapeutics Inc.. Of course, there are also many other entities who are progressing iPSC-derived cellular therapeutics into clinical trials. These noncommercial entities include: Universitätsmedizin Göttingen, Osaka University, Nanjing University Medical School, Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto University, Keio University, Kobe City Eye Hospital, NIH Clinical Center (CC) and Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/gE3uiwby #ipsc #celltherapy #clinicaltrials

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Today, there are an astounding 28,000+ articles published about #exosomes on PubMed.gov, of which the vast majority were recently released. An impressive 19,611 of those publications were published in the past 5 years. This means that approximately 70% of all exosome publications were published within the past five years, proving to scientists, clinicians, and investors alike that the exosome industry is coming of age—and exploding with potential. Exosomes are now being explored across a diverse range of therapeutic and diagnostic applications, with particular attention being given by the pharmaceutical industry to drug-loaded exosomes. Already, three pharmaceutical companies have signed partnership deals with exosome companies offering up-front, royalty, and milestone payments structured to deliver at or around $1 billion dollars. Within the past 5 years, there have been at least 7 partnership deals within the exosome industry, 8 large venture capital events, and 2 major acquisitions. Globally, there are at least 204 clinical trials focusing on exosome-related studies. Of these, 114 trials are evaluating exosome-based therapeutics and 74 trials are testing exosome-based diagnostic tests. Currently, 93 of the exosome trials (45%) are observational studies and 111 of them (55%) are interventional studies. A surprising 88 (43%) of them are actively recruiting patients. Furthermore, the exosome industry has already provided two FDA-approved diagnostic tests, including: - Bio-Techne's ExoDx Prostate IntelliScore Test for prostate cancer  - Guardant's 360 CDx test for non-small cell lung cancer Importantly, the ability to engineer exosomes to carry desired drugs and target specific sites opens a new class of therapeutics that do not have the side effects and toxicity associated with small molecule-based therapies or cell-based therapies. Some of the advantages that make exosomes suitable therapeutic vehicles are their ability to hone to the target tissue, their ability to pass through biological barriers, and their ability to act as encapsulated drugs that can avoid immune system detection and degradation. Exosome-based diagnostics also offer revolutionary advantages. They are minimally invasive, offer ease of use, facilitate speed of detection, and can act as prognostic indicators for a patient’s response to a specific course of treatment. To characterize the rapidly proliferating exosome market, BioInformant released the "Global Exosome Market – Market Size, Forecast, Trials and Trends." Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/e_yF42j

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Happy Friday all! Check out this open access Cell paper by Yang et al., "Pan-cancer single-cell dissection reveals phenotypically distinct B cell subtypes." Summary: Characterizing the compositional and phenotypic characteristics of tumor-infiltrating B cells (TIBs) is important for advancing our understanding of their role in cancer development. Here, we establish a comprehensive resource of human B cells by integrating single-cell RNA sequencing data of B cells from 649 patients across 19 major cancer types. We demonstrate substantial heterogeneity in their total abundance and subtype composition and observe immunoglobulin G (IgG)-skewness of antibody-secreting cell isotypes. Moreover, we identify stress-response memory B cells and tumor-associated atypical B cells (TAABs), two tumor-enriched subpopulations with prognostic potential, shared in a pan-cancer manner. In particular, TAABs, characterized by a high clonal expansion level and proliferative capacity as well as by close interactions with activated CD4 T cells in tumors, are predictive of immunotherapy response. Our integrative resource depicts distinct clinically relevant TIB subsets, laying a foundation for further exploration of functional commonality and diversity of B cells in cancer. #drugdiscovery #cancerresearch #bcells #immunotherapy #immunooncology #rnaseq #singlecell #scientificresearch

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