Ocata Therapeutics licenses induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology from Allele Biotechnology

Ocata Therapeutics, a leader in the field of Regenerative Ophthalmology™, has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Allele Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals to access Allele’s proprietary technology for generating human induced pluripotent stem cells (“iPSCs”).

“This agreement with Allele is part of our strategy to broaden our technology platform and increase our leadership in regenerative ophthalmology,” said Paul Wotton Ph.D., President and CEO of Ocata. “Ocata can now take advantage of induced and embryonic pluripotent stem cells to produce commercially viable human tissue for transplantation. We recently confirmed proof of concept in creating photoreceptors capable of preventing blindness and restoring vision in established animal models. Data from these studies will be published later this year.”

“Footprint-free” reprogramming technology potentially offers a scalable process for producing iPSCs with superior properties

Since Dr. Yamanaka discovered how to generate iPSCs in 2007 there has been tremendous enthusiasm about the potential to use these pluripotent cells to develop commercially viable therapies. Despite many efforts to develop iPSC derived therapies in the same scalable and reliable way as embryonic stem cells, many of those efforts have been unsuccessful due to issues relating to the growth capacity, differentiation potentials and epigenetic properties of iPSCs. The “footprint-free” reprogramming technology developed by Allele potentially offers a reliable and scalable process for producing iPSCs with superior properties and is a major step for translation of iPSC technology to practical clinical use. These iPSCs can potentially be used to manufacture millions of treatment doses as off-the-shelf therapies for any patient.

“We have had a strong leadership role in this area,” said Robert Lanza, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Ocata. “Ocata has extensive experience and patent rights in generating both ocular and non-ocular cell types from human iPSCs. We have painstakingly and patiently evaluated many different iPSC technologies and selected the Allele technology only after we were satisfied and confident that this represented the best of all approaches and could permit us to generate transplantable tissues that would be potentially safe in human patients. In our hands, the iPSCs we are generating are comparable to our embryonic stem cells in those features required for use in potential human therapies.”

“It is particularly rewarding to us that Ocata, a company whose understanding of the science and regulatory requirements in this space is unparalleled, has selected the iPSC technology developed at Allele for application in its own pipeline,” said Jiwu Wang Ph.D., President and CEO of Allele. “It only serves to confirm our belief that our iPSC platform is a solution to what otherwise have been unresolved issues associated with the maturation of iPSCs to a fully functional state. The ability to predictably derive stable iPSC lines without using any viral element or foreign DNA enables both fundamental scientific research and clinical applications, which has been the mission of Allele Biotechnology from its inception.”

For more information about Ocata Therapeutics, Inc., please visit www.ocata.com.