Cell therapy industry partnership launched

Pharma and biotech companies including Roche and Genzyme are to launch a series of initiatives to bolster progress in the cell therapy regenerative medicine market.

They will join with the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) to “create greater strategic alignment within the industry and drive late stage clinical development”.

The Vancouver-based ISCT’s Industry Task Force (ITF), set up in March, will also include Athersys, Miltenyi Biotec, Hospira, Lonza and Life Technologies as part of a move to engage more with the commercial sector.

Full details of how ISCT proposes to address issues such as commercialisation of technology will be published in November, but the overarchnig idea is that partnership working will help develop common standards.

“We aim to facilitate entry into the cell therapy space for large healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, those members of the industry most reliably able to initiate and maintain advanced phase clinical trials,” said ISCT president Ed Horwitz.

“Ultimately, this will expedite the maturation of the field and bring cell therapy treatments to patients faster,” he added.

Tracey Lodie, director of stem cell biology at Genzyme, said she had been impressed with the way ISCT got various groups together, “how they would bridge this gap between the organisations, provide the information, much more on a knowledge and academic base”.

The new initiative would help take cutting-edge developments from the academic world and link them with companies which are interested in developing early-stage technologies, she added.

“I think that’s the power now of the ISCT,” Lodie explains. “Bringing all these groups and information together so that it’s available to everybody.”

Robert Deans, Athersys senior vice president, regenerative medicine – who also chairs the ISCT commercialisation committee - said ISCT was the “logical home base” for companies in the translational medicine field.

“The commercialisation committee is a consortium of institutional, technology, regulatory and industry thought leaders trying to move therapies out of phase I and II,” he adds. “It is poised to be very influential in driving out standards for that process.”

One of its jobs is to facilitate discussions on process and product development, business models, industry education, clinical development and new product introduction.