November 7, 2018
BioLamina and partners aim to develop new methods to differentiate unlimited amounts of NK-cells to fight cancer
BioLamina’s products have been successfully used to generate dopaminergic cells, cardiomyocytes as well as many other cell types. BioLamina AB (Sweden) now takes on a new challenge – to generate natural killer (NK) cells that can potentially be used to fight different types of cancer.
BioLamina develops and produces high quality reagents supporting the global stem cell research community in its endeavour to cultivate fully functional cells in vitro and to develop various cell therapies. BioLamina’s best-selling product, the human recombinant laminin 521 substrate, has solved many process-related issues in therapeutic cell manufacturing, such as low cell quality and yield, thus proving its value to researcher and manufacturer alike.
Now BioLamina’s expertise with laminin technologies will be used to differentiate stem cells into NK-cells, which are then further manipulated to form CAR-NKs. The CAR-NKs are predicted to be safer to patients, and potentially even more efficient in treating some forms of cancer than the current “star” of the proverbial cell therapy sky, the CAR-T cell. CAR-T cells have significantly increased the prognosis for cancer patients, with two approved therapies in Europe alone. With success, the stem cell-derived CAR-NKs borne of this collaborative effort could prove to be another game-changer in the field of cancer therapeutics.
Together with Rheincell Therapeutics and the University Clinic in Düsseldorf (Universitätsklinikum Düsseldorf), over the next two years BioLamina will develop methods to differentiate NK cells supported by a grant of 12 MSEK from Swedish Vinnova and German ZIM.
“The three partners complement each other and have great knowledge of primary cell culture and NK cells,” says Kristian Tryggvason, CEO of BioLamina. He continues: “I hope that we will be able to develop and validate a protocol to ensure an unlimited source of allogeneic NK cells to fight cancer”.
For more information, please contact:
BIOLAMINA AB
Kristian Tryggvason, CEO
E-mail: communications@biolamina.com
