- Canadian granting agency MITACS commits to three years of funding for the project's second stage to optimize certain proprietary microcarrier technologies for use in RepliCel's cell therapy manufacturing
- RepliCel signs an Option to License agreement related to a filed US patent application
(“RepliCel” or the “Company”), a company developing next-generation technologies in aesthetics and orthopedics is pleased to announce that the first stage of a research project with the University of Victoria Centre for Biomedical Engineering (“UVic”) has led to significant milestones in terms of technology advancements, patent filings, grant funding, and a license option agreement.
As a result of the innovations coming out of the collaboration to date, RepliCel has signed a Technology Evaluation and Option to License agreement pertaining to a patent filed with the US Patent Office (“USPTO”) on “multifunctional microcarriers with thermal-responsive biomaterials coatings”. The agreement grants RepliCel an option to license the patent and related technologies for global applications related to therapeutic cell culture in RepliCel’s fields of interest.
Additionally, the parties have now executed a new research collaboration agreement intended to optimize the innovations for use with RepliCel’s technologies and are pleased to announce that this next phase of the collaboration has been awarded a new grant of funding over three years from the Mitacs Accelerate program.
“Based on the success of the NSERC-funded first phase of this collaboration, we are very pleased to have now procured significant funding support from the Mitacs Accelerate Program which focuses on scientific innovations with significant industrial or commercial application. This is a tremendous endorsement of our innovations, progress, and the technology’s potential utility,” stated RepliCel’s President and CEO, R. Lee Buckler.
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“We are also very pleased to continue this collaboration with Dr. Akbari and his team at UVic. He is one of the world’s emerging experts on biomedical engineering and the employment of advanced materials and micro-technologies for cell and tissue culture. The collaboration represents a unique opportunity to leverage his expertise and non-dilutive grant funding to innovate around RepliCel’s technologies in ways expected to improve the Company’s commercial-scale manufacturing”.
The UVic-RepliCel Micocarrier Cell Culture Project
The first phase of the two-year RepliCel-UVic project, announced in late 2018 and extended due to COVID-19 implications, was performed at the University of Victoria Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Laboratory for Innovations in Microengineering under the leadership of Dr. Mohsen Akbari with input from RepliCel Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Kevin McElwee. The project was co-funded by RepliCel Life Sciences and a grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (“NSERC”) under the NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (“CRD”) program. This first phase of the project resulted in further development of a proprietary microcarrier technology which is the subject of a U.S. patent application, employing certain advanced materials and properties designed as an innovative platform for adherent cell culture in small volumetric footprints with the potential to reduce media consumption, culture time, and/or the use and disposal of single-use plastics.
This newly launched second phase of the collaboration will focus on approaches to optimize therapeutic cell culture platforms, such as those employed in RepliCel’s cell therapy manufacturing, for eventual commercial-scale production. This phase of the project will focus on optimizing the proprietary microcarrier technology for use in culturing RepliCel’s therapeutic cell therapy products as part of RepliCel’s vision for its next-generation manufacturing. This phase of the project will be co-funded by RepliCel and the Mitacs Accelerate program and co-led by Dr. Mohsen Akbari, Associate Professor at the University of Victoria and Director of the Laboratory for Innovations in Microengineering (LiME), and RepliCel’s Dr. Kevin McElwee.
Source: Biospace