SCT, Thermo Fisher Scientific collaborate to advance development of cardiac disease models

Oct 7 2015

Stem Cell Theranostics (SCT) announced today that they have successfully completed a research collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific focused on advancing the development of cardiac disease models derived from induced pluripotent stem cells using Thermo Fisher Scientific's suite of work flow reagents and SCT's patient biobank and proprietary disease modeling methods.

Through this collaboration, scientists at Stem Cell Theranostics used Thermo Fisher Scientific workflow reagents to develop stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes from patients with inherited hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). The resulting cardiomyocytes displayed many of the features of disease, including irregular heart beat and enlarged cell size, making them a promising model for drug discovery and therapeutic development.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the world. The cost, both in lives and resources, is enormous. Despite the cost to society the development of specific, effective cardiovascular drugs is lagging and prevalent diseases like HCM, a disease that affects 1 in 500 people, are managed by treating symptoms not the underlying disease. Current models used to screen the effectiveness of drugs prior to clinical testing in humans do not accurately represent the characteristics of the human heart and are not predictive of clinical trial success. Developing drug-screening models that more accurately represent disease will enable the development of new and more effective drugs.

"The ability to reproducibly generate stem cell-derived cardiac disease models requires both standardized workflows and highly reproducible technologies and reagents," said Chris Armstrong, CEO of Stem Cell Theranostics. "Our success with Thermo Fisher Scientific's workflow reagents, in particular their reagents for the generation of cardiomyocytes from pluripotent stem cells, has enabled us to develop a broad panel of patient-derived cardiomyocyte models to study inherited heart disease."

SOURCE Stem Cell Theranostics Inc