Additional Family of CombiCult Patents Granted in USA, Europe, Australia and Singapore

Plasticell, the biotechnology company developing regenerative drugs using high throughput stem cell technologies, has announced that a further family of patents, offering additional protection of its proprietary cell culture technology, Combinatorial Cell Culture (CombiCult), has been granted by the US Patent Office, European Patent Office, Australian Patent Office and Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

The newly granted patents cover the use of nanomaterial tags to track the cell culture history of cells grown on beads and exemplify use of the method to deduce optimal culture conditions for the differentiation of stem cells. ‘These patents provide a secondary layer of coverage for Plasticell’s platform technology and extend the lifespan of patent protection,’ said Dr Yen Choo, founder and Executive Chairman of Plasticell and inventor of the methods.

Combinatorial Cell Culture forms the basis of the company’s CombiCult system for high throughput screening of stem cell differentiation protocols. CombiCult allows researchers to rapidly identify and/or optimise novel protocols which are highly efficient and/or cost-effective, free of undesirable media components such as serum, and to replace growth factors with small molecules.

Plasticell forms collaborations with industry partners to use CombiCult in the production of rare cell types for research or therapy applications.