Max
07-30-2001, 11:58 AM
Select Therapeutics uses controversy-free stem cells
Allison Connolly
So, with all this debate over stem cell research, it would be hard for scientists not to feel embattled. The words "stem cell" have become such a catch-all for the controversy that laypeople may not know most stem cell research is not associated with the debate at all.
Take, for example, the work done by Woburn-based Select Therapeutics Inc., and its stem cell research arm, Cell Science Therapeutics Inc. (CST). The companies, which will be folded into one under the Select name early next year, have developed a technology that allows scientists to increase by up to sixfold the number of stem cells culled from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow. The company is engineering the cells in an effort to develop therapies for certain cancers, immunodeficiencies and infectious diseases, according to a company profile. The healthy stem cells are harvested and infused in a patient, where they are supposed to supplant the patient's diseased cells.
However, the companies do not take stem cells from embryos, the specific types of stem cells at the heart of the federal debate over research.
"Sometimes people hear the word `stem cell' and don't know the difference between embryonic stem cells and stem cells taken from adults," said Mark Pykett, president of CST.
Fortunately for Select's companies, the right people know the difference.
In the last couple of weeks, the companies racked up significant grant money from the federal government. The National Science Foundation gave Select and its grant-getting partner, Cytomatrix LLC (which also will be folded into Select), a total of $598,529 to use the companies' technology to procure umbilical cord blood cells and freeze them for future use.
The company received contract funding worth $350,000 from the U.S. Department of Defense, to develop a vaccine from T-cells, the body's immune response cells. The funding caps a total of $1.1 million that the company has received from the DoD since 1998.
The Select/CST technology is a tantalum-covered scaffolding about the size of a credit card. It acts like the bone marrow, incubating stem cells and allowing them to multiply. The system is easy and quick, Pykett said, and, unlike Select's competitors, does not use animal serum and cell-regulating protein called cytokines. Basically, a scientist puts the Select scaffold in a container and adds cells, then puts the container in an incubator. In seven to 10 days, the scientist takes the container out of the incubator and removes the cells, which have multiplied.
Pykett said there are a number of applications for the scaffold technology, and rattled off a list of them: "skin cells, muscle cells, neural cells, liver cells ... You can just put an `etcetera' after that," he said.
Select's target market right now is cancer patients with myeloma and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The company will have begun Phase I/II trials for such patients by the end of the summer, Pykett said. The public company's stock was trading at $2.74 per share at one point this past week.
Last month, CST signed a deal with Braintree-based Haemonetics Corp. to develop a second-generation stem cell expansion device.
As for the stem cell debate being played out on Capitol Hill and in the press, Pykett shrugs it off.
"We don't see the decision over embryonic stem cells hurting us either way," he said.
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Allison Connolly
So, with all this debate over stem cell research, it would be hard for scientists not to feel embattled. The words "stem cell" have become such a catch-all for the controversy that laypeople may not know most stem cell research is not associated with the debate at all.
Take, for example, the work done by Woburn-based Select Therapeutics Inc., and its stem cell research arm, Cell Science Therapeutics Inc. (CST). The companies, which will be folded into one under the Select name early next year, have developed a technology that allows scientists to increase by up to sixfold the number of stem cells culled from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow. The company is engineering the cells in an effort to develop therapies for certain cancers, immunodeficiencies and infectious diseases, according to a company profile. The healthy stem cells are harvested and infused in a patient, where they are supposed to supplant the patient's diseased cells.
However, the companies do not take stem cells from embryos, the specific types of stem cells at the heart of the federal debate over research.
"Sometimes people hear the word `stem cell' and don't know the difference between embryonic stem cells and stem cells taken from adults," said Mark Pykett, president of CST.
Fortunately for Select's companies, the right people know the difference.
In the last couple of weeks, the companies racked up significant grant money from the federal government. The National Science Foundation gave Select and its grant-getting partner, Cytomatrix LLC (which also will be folded into Select), a total of $598,529 to use the companies' technology to procure umbilical cord blood cells and freeze them for future use.
The company received contract funding worth $350,000 from the U.S. Department of Defense, to develop a vaccine from T-cells, the body's immune response cells. The funding caps a total of $1.1 million that the company has received from the DoD since 1998.
The Select/CST technology is a tantalum-covered scaffolding about the size of a credit card. It acts like the bone marrow, incubating stem cells and allowing them to multiply. The system is easy and quick, Pykett said, and, unlike Select's competitors, does not use animal serum and cell-regulating protein called cytokines. Basically, a scientist puts the Select scaffold in a container and adds cells, then puts the container in an incubator. In seven to 10 days, the scientist takes the container out of the incubator and removes the cells, which have multiplied.
Pykett said there are a number of applications for the scaffold technology, and rattled off a list of them: "skin cells, muscle cells, neural cells, liver cells ... You can just put an `etcetera' after that," he said.
Select's target market right now is cancer patients with myeloma and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The company will have begun Phase I/II trials for such patients by the end of the summer, Pykett said. The public company's stock was trading at $2.74 per share at one point this past week.
Last month, CST signed a deal with Braintree-based Haemonetics Corp. to develop a second-generation stem cell expansion device.
As for the stem cell debate being played out on Capitol Hill and in the press, Pykett shrugs it off.
"We don't see the decision over embryonic stem cells hurting us either way," he said.
http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/eek.gif