Pfizer Moves Into Stem Cell Research
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
September 24, 2008, 7:54 am
Pfizer’s getting into the stem cell business. The company opened a “regenerative medicine unit” in Cambridge, Mass. last spring, and plans to open another similar shop in Cambridge, U.K., in November, Reuters reports.
Researchers hope to use new techniques that give ordinary adult cells the characteristics of embryonic stem cells. “These cells will be tremendous in drug discovery,” an R&D exec told Reuters. “They will help us understand personalized medicine, genetic variation, ethnic populations, what biomarkers to follow.”
The first uses will be early-stage safety testing. But eventually, work could shift to creating new tissues to be used to treat disease — new heart cells, for example, could repair damaged tissue. Of course, lots of smart people have been trying to figure that sort of thing out for a while now, with very limited success.
The U.S. shop will focus on heart disease and diabetes; the U.K. operation will focus on ophthalmology and the central nervous system.
Pfizer has laid out a few company rules for the stem cell road that don’t preclude the eventual use of embryonic stem cells for therapeutic use.
Earlier this year, Corey Goodman, Pfizer’s newish biotech guru told Forbes: “Pfizer has put its flag in the ground that there is future in regenerative medicine.” The company, as Forbes reported, is backing EyeCyte, a startup in San Diego that’s working on a treatment for retina damage with adult stem cells.
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