Wednesday August 18, 10:10 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: BioTransplant, Inc.
Stem Cell Sciences Announces Collaboration with
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer
SCS licenses gene and drug screening technology to RPR
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- A new alliance in stem cell-based gene and drug
screening has been formed between Australian biotechnology company Stem Cell Sciences (SCS) andFranco-American
pharmaceutical company Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (RPR). SCS will provide RPR with the gene screening technology to
functionally validate neuroprotective genes and genetically engineered cells for use in their Alzheimer's drug discovery program.
Under the terms of the current agreement, RPR will pay SCS $1.5 million dollars in up-front and milestone payments in return
for a non-exclusive license to use SCS's gene and drug screening technology.
According to Dr. Peter Mountford, Chief Scientific Officer at SCS, the advantage of this cell-based screening system is that it
allows large numbers of genes or compounds to be tested in normal cells.
''This is particularly important in modern pharmaceutical research because older screening technologies, such as laboratory
animal testing, are not capable or are simply inappropriate for testing the growing numbers of genes and compounds now
available,'' said Dr. Mountford.
Dr. Mountford continued, ''There are around 130,000 human genes, most of which have only recently been identified and have
no known function. The next step is to work out which genes play key roles in the development of disease, and which of the
many hundreds of thousands of possible new drugs can block their action.''
Dr. Laurent Pradier, Director Molecular Biology, CNS Research, RPR, commented, ''The SCS technology will provide large
quantities of neuronal cells for drug screening applications.
In addition, it has been extremely difficult to introduce new genes in neurons and the SCS technology provides a key tool to
engineer neurons and allow functional characterization of novel genes in a real neuronal setting. In view of the acceleration of
gene discovery process, the key limiting factor will remain the functional validation in a cellular model resembling the
physiological conditions. The SCS neuronal cells provide such a powerful model to study new genes linked to
neuroprotection.''
SCS has developed stem cell culture and purification technologies that provide an unlimited source of many different cell types
including nerves, blood and heart for gene and drug screening assays. With this technology, cells can be used in their normal
state to test if newly discovered genes have a role in causing human disease. Alternatively, cells can be genetically modified for
use in disease-specific drug screening assays.
The uniqueness of SCS's cell-based screening system is that it allows thousands of genes and compounds to be tested on
normal cells in the laboratory. This offers a completely new way of conducting high-throughput drug screening, by combining
high-throughput screening capacity with clinically relevant biological assays.
SCS will use its established cell-culture and purification technologies to provide a range of normal cells for its immediate cell
screening business and, in parallel, continue the scale-up of cell supply for the Company's longer- term business in cell-based
regenerative therapies for human medicine.
SCS has an exclusive license to technology from the world's largest pluripotent stem cell research institute, the Centre for
Genome Research, Edinburgh University, Scotland. SCS is also sponsoring research at the Centre for Early Human
Development, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
Since its establishment in 1994, SCS has attracted equity investments and entered research and licensing agreements with
international biopharmaceutical companies including Glaxo Wellcome, Hoechst Marion Rousell, SmithKline Beecham, and
Genentech Inc. BioTransplant, Inc. (Nasdaq: BTRN - news) of Charlestown, Massachusetts has a 30% equity stake in SCS
and has an alliance with the Company in xenotransplantation. SCS has also established a new US- based company, CellBio
Inc., to develop all of the Company's business interests in human medicine, including cell-based gene and drug screening and
cell-based therapies.
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (RPR) the global pharmaceutical subsidiary of Rhone- Poulenc S.A., is dedicated to improving human
health. Rhone-Poulenc S.A. is a leading life sciences company growing through innovations in human, plant and animal health
and through its specialty chemicals subsidiary, Rhodia. With sales in 1997 of FF90 billion (US$15 billion), the company
employs 68,000 people in 160 countries worldwide.
SOURCE: BioTransplant, Inc. |
