Geron Announces Development of Defined Culture Medium for the Propagation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Geron Corporation (Nasdaq:GERN) today announced the
development of a defined, serum-free culture system for the
propagation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). This new culture
system relies solely on completely defined components for hESC growth,
facilitating safe and scalable expansion of these cells for cell-based
therapeutics.
In a presentation at the 2003 annual meeting of the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers in San Francisco, Geron presented
studies demonstrating that hESCs could be expanded in a culture medium
that contains only human-sourced proteins and defined recombinant
growth factors. Using these defined conditions, hESCs could be
propagated for at least 120 days in culture while maintaining normal
morphology, doubling time, and expression of a panel of markers
characteristic of hESCs. Moreover, hESCs propagated under these
conditions continued to be pluripotent, differentiating into cells
representative of endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm, the three cell
lineages of the human body.
This work extends Geron's previous development of feeder-free
growth conditions for hESCs. Geron had earlier developed protocols to
culture hESCs in the absence of direct contact with feeder cells by
using extracellular matrix proteins and cell-free media that had been
previously conditioned by feeder cells. "This new development allows
the replacement of conditioned medium with a fully defined medium that
contains only human-sourced proteins and purified growth factors,"
stated Jane S. Lebkowski, Ph.D., Geron's vice president of
regenerative medicine. "This advance greatly facilitates the scalable
production of the cells while essentially eliminating the risk of
contamination by non-human infectious agents in the culture process
for undifferentiated cells."
"This advance is a major development towards our goal of producing
safe and cost-effective cell-based therapeutics for treating
degenerative disease," stated Thomas B. Okarma, Ph.D., M.D., Geron's
president and chief executive officer. "In addition to achieving our
objective for safety, which will also be a focus of regulatory
agencies, this process breakthrough alone has significantly lowered
our current manufacturing costs. Geron is now incorporating this
defined culture system in all of its manufacturing protocols for the
production of therapeutic cells."
Geron is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and
commercializing therapeutic and diagnostic products for cancer based
on its telomerase technology, and cell-based therapeutics using its
human embryonic stem cell technology. |
