Stemistry
Harnessing the full potential of stem cells is one of the major challenges in medicine and healthcare nowadays. Stem cells are specialised human cells that have the ability to develop into many different cell types. They have the ability to repair damaged tissues and have a great potential in various clinical applications. Over recent years, small molecules have emerged as essential tools for understanding, regulating, and manipulating stem cells—stemistry, is what they call it.
Stemistry is the control of stem cells in situ using chemistry. It refers to the ability of small molecules to be used as important tools in controlling stem cells which will help us understand more about their underlying nature. It offers unprecedented advantages over other techniques in terms of speed, cost, reproducibility, and the ability to influence stem cell fate reversibly.
The continued interest for small molecules targeting in vivo aspects of regeneration, including adult stem cells, stem cell niches, and mechanisms of homing, mobilization, and engraftment as well as somatic cell proliferation have been the new emerging paradigm in the field of research.
Stem cells are specialized human cells that have the ability to develop into many different cell types, from muscle cells to brain cells. They have the ability to repair damaged tissues and have great potential in clinical applications, however limitations with regards to their availability and the difficulty in controlling their fate have to addressed to harness their full potential using small molecules.
Small molecules can have effects ranging from: (1) reprogramming, (2) expansion or directed differentiation, (3) modulation of specific signalling pathways of stem cells, (4)therapeutic effects in in vivo disease models to (4) survival, ablation, or migration of cancer cells.
Advantages of Small Molecules
- Small molecules can be cell permeable and have the ability to affect signaling pathways within the cells
- Defined, more stable, and cost-effective than growth factors
- Easier and achievable purification process even at larger scales
- Very low lot-to-lot variability in different batches of synthesis
- Lack of immunogenecity compared to many protein therapeutics
- Achievable structural variations to fine tune their properties
Esco VacciXcell, with our Tide Motion platform, offers a great advantage in Stemistry applications with our adherent MSC-culturing approach. Our Tide Motion System ensures a robust, economically-defined, and linearly scalable culture processes that provide higher cell yields using our BioNOCTM II macroporous carriers.
In Esco, we understand that the need in developing a precise large-scale stem cell expansion and differentiation processes is not determined by cell number requirements alone, but also, the compliance with the currently evolving regulatory framework for stem cell-derived therapeutics, including the application of relevant “current good manufacturing practice” (cGMP) guidelines is also necessary.
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