Cellular Engineering Technologies (CET) and John Paul II Medical Research Institute (JP2MRI) have partnered to develop a private stem cell biobank to advance discovery of personalised drugs and biomanufacturing.

The bank will hold 5,000 patient and disease-specific stem cell lines and other human cell lines derived from adult sources. However, it will not include embryonic stem cells.

CET, a stem cell biotech company, and non-profit organisation JP2MRI hope that the stem cell biobank will help overcome obstacles facing personalised medicines by enabling testing on patient-specific stem cells instead of the currently used model that involves animal testing and expensive clinical trials.

According to CET, the current cost of brining a drug to market is more than $1bn and takes over ten years. The annual rate of FDA approved drugs has declined while the research and development costs have significantly increased.

"The bank will hold 5,000 patient and disease-specific stem cell lines and other human cell lines derived from adult sources. However, it will not include embryonic stem cells."

CET and JP2MRI hope the biobank stem cell lines will be better models to predict the outcome of drug therapies in patients and advance research to bring new drugs to the market much more quickly and cheaply..

CET CEO and co-founder Dr Alan Moy said; "The collaboration with the JP2MRI will allow CET to provide scientists with the tools to accelerate drug discovery and advance personalised medicine."

Stem cell donations to the bank will come directly from patients recruited from private practice doctors and private hospitals.

JP2MRI CEO Jay Kamath commented; "The Institute has launched its Give Cures programme that has created a network of doctors in several private clinics and hospitals around the country to recruit patients to procure tissue to create the stem cell lines.

"The program is currently recruiting patients with genetic diseases, cancer, and disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease so that industry, government, and academia can be more productive in their drug discovery efforts."

CET already manufactures a variety of human somatic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells, cancer cells and specialised tissue culture media to grow and differentiate stem cells.