"Umbilical cord blood is playing an increasingly important role in the use of cell therapy in the successful treatment of human disease," said Nigel Darby, vice president of research and development, Protein Separations at GE Healthcare. "Saneron and GE Healthcare are working together to provide a solution for a sterile density medium manufactured under GMP conditions to meet the growing need for processing umbilical cord blood so that it may be used in cell therapy,"

Ficoll-Paque, a sterile density medium, has been used for 30 years to isolate high yields of mononuclear cells from peripheral blood and bone marrow. However, the cell composition in umbilical cord blood, being significantly different from peripheral blood and bone marrow demands different separation characteristics. The version of Ficoll-Paque being developed by GE Healthcare and Saneron will specifically process stem cells from umbilical cord blood. The new Ficoll-Paque will be manufactured under GMP standards

"Saneron has developed a proprietary processing technique for the isolation of a heterogeneous population of cells from umbilical cord blood that has shown promising results in preclinical studies of stroke, myocardial infarction, spinal cord injury, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). The cell separation media from GE Healthcare already provides exceptional gradient separation of cells and the new version of Ficoll-Paque will be extremely valuable to Saneron in the completion of proof of principle studies prior to the initiation of future clinical trials," said Dr. Cyndy Davis Sanberg, vice president of research, Saneron. "This represents an important milestone in Saneron’s cord blood stem cell processing."

The new Ficoll-Paque is being developed at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY, and tested at Saneron’s facilities at the University of South Florida’s research park. GE Healthcare will commercialize the final product. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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