Scottish supplier of clinical-grade pluripotent stem cells announced that it has established a new partnership to allow Pfizer access to its production lines.
The purpose of the agreement is for Pfizer to evaluate the quality of the operations at Roslin Cells in order to ascertain whether or not the stem cell supplier has the potential for “specific clinical therapies”.
Roslin Cells noted that it will be the first time its Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) level cell lines will be evaluated by one of the major pharmaceutical companies.
“We have made a substantial investment in establishing the capability to derive new stem cell lines to the standards required for their use as the starting material for a clinical therapy,” noted Aidan Courtney, chief executive officer of the company.
The announcement was made after Roslin Cells recently proposed a similar partnership with Advanced Cell Technology a leader in US regenerative medicine. The two firms are to establish new clinical-grade human embryonic stem-cell lines using ACT’s proprietary ‘single-cell blastomere’ technique.
Roslin Cells was set up in 2006 by Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute with support from the University of Edinburgh, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and Scottish Enterprise.
George Archer
