BioTime, Inc. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability of human pluripotent stem cells (hPS) to

Description

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability of human pluripotent stem cells (hPS) to both self-renew and differentiate into virtually any cell type make them a promising source of cells for drug research and development, toxicity screening, developmental research and cell based therapies. Indeed, the derivation of patient matched cells from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patient skin samples has the potential to treat conditions where cells are lost to disease or injury. However, stem cellidentity, purity and scalability remain formidable challenges for translating pluripotent stem cell research to clinical applications. There is a lack of highly efficient methods for directed differentiation from hPS cell lines to mature cell types o interest and scale-up from hPS cells is costly. The derivation of scalable (self-renewing) embryonic progenitor stem cell lines offers a solution because they are well defined, clonally pure, simpler and less costly to produce on an industrial scale. Pre