Bio-Techne signs exclusive license agreement with multiclonal therapeutics for adult “ground state” stem cell technology
The exclusive agreement will commercialize reagents and media systems in the research reagent field intended for cloning, propagating and differentiating adult “ground state” stem cells from healthy and diseased epithelial tissues.
Bio-Techne (MN, USA) has entered into an exclusive license agreement with Multiclonal Therapeutics (MCT; MC, USA) to commercialize reagents and media systems in the research reagent field intended for cloning, propagating and differentiating adult “ground state” stem cells from healthy and diseased epithelial tissues. Working together, Bio-Techne and MCT will transition this breakthrough technology into reagents and model systems that will be made available under this license to the research community, enabling scientists to create ex vivo models of epithelial organs in their own laboratories using tissue-specific adult stem cells. These reagents are complementary to and will utilize Bio-Techne’s existing technologies for recombinant protein, small molecule, and media generation.
Chuck Kummeth, President and CEO of Bio-Techne, commented, “It is an incredible opportunity working with Multiclonal Therapeutics to bring their novel technology into the hands of researchers. We believe these adult ’ground-state’ stem cell populations will provide an important tool for the advancement of disease modeling, drug screening, biomarker discovery and novel therapeutic discovery.”
This technology was discovered by the MCT co-founders and research team of Wa Xian and Frank McKeon. Dr McKeon commented on the agreement, “We are thrilled to partner with Bio-Techne to develop the potential of this technology for research laboratories and look forward with great anticipation to the new insights into disease mechanisms and regenerative medicine we anticipate this system will enable.”
“Ground state” stem cells reside in most tissues, providing a source of cells for local tissue regeneration or, in the case of cancer and other diseases, the cell regenerating the diseased tissue. This new cell culture and cloning technology will rapidly isolate and propagate adult “ground state” stem cells from small biopsy samples of epithelial tissues — both normal and diseased — and maintain the features and functionality of the stem cells as they existed in the underlying tissue. The MCT technology preserves the ground state of the isolated stem cells by maintaining the regional specificity of cells isolated from closely associated but distinct regions of an organ, as well as the stable maintenance of disease epigenetics in stem cells isolated from inflammatory and cancer tissues.
The reagents and model systems Bio-Techne will be able to offer through this license from MCT provide a transformative platform to isolate, expand and differentiate adult stem cells from a broad range of human and rodent epithelial tissues. Generating healthy and diseased tissues from adult stem cells offers a model to facilitate regenerative medicine research, drug screening and development, toxicology screening, biomarker discovery and disease modeling.