Vitro Files New Patent for Stem Cell Therapy of Diabetes
Related News: Stem Cell Companies, Stem Cells and DiabetesAURORA, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2005--Vitro Diagnostics, Inc. (OTCBB: VODG), a biotechnology company, announced the filing of a new patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office regarding a procedure for the generation of beta islets from stem cells. The Company discovered a new process to generate immortal cell lines that can be induced to form cells of the beta islets by exposure to certain environmental conditions. The new patent application describes a method of producing and maintaining beta islet progenitor cells as well as about 30 new human beta islet progenitor cell lines. The new cell lines developed by the Company are not derived from human embryonic stem cells but rather from partially differentiated human pancreatic cell lines previously developed by the Company.
Type I diabetes (diabetes mellitus) affects about 15 million people worldwide and may be successfully treated by beta islet transplants. However, there is insufficient supply of transplantable materials to treat the number of afflicted patients and discovery of viable methods to increase the number of available beta islets for transplantation is a major goal of diabetes research.
Dr. Jim Musick, Vitro's newly appointed Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer said, "We are pleased to have developed new cell lines with potential application to the advancement of new therapies for diabetes. We intend to add human beta islet progenitor cell lines and associated products to our VITROCELL(TM) product line as soon as practical. We hope that these products will provide the research community opportunities to investigate human beta islet cells derived from a renewal cellular source that has not previously been available. These new tools may further advance the development of cellular therapies for diabetes."
The Company also intends to further pursue development of its cell technology into new products for treatment of diabetes, given the availability of adequate resources. Dr. Jim Posillico, Vitro's newly appointed President and CEO, said, "The extension of our cell immortalization platform to stem cells provides additional opportunities for significant commercial development. While stem cell therapy has potential application to a great variety of novel therapies of diseases characterized by cellular degeneration, diabetes is an attractive target application. Previous work has shown the potential efficacy of beta islet transplantation therapy and thus stem cell-derived beta islets may be compared to transplanted islets through direct measurement of various clinical outcomes."
Posted on May 3, 2005 12:53 PM