Our background

In 2016, the UKRMP Programme Board approved three partnership projects under PSCP:

Project 1 – Extends our hubs expertise through collaboration with Prof. Malin Parmar and her team in Lund. The project is developing the protocols for differentiating and cryopreserving dopaminergic neurons from clinical hESC lines to standards required for clinical trials.

Project 2 – Further extends our network to the Institute for Stem cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic diseases (I-Stem), France and the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT, Germany, and is addressing the issues associated with automated expansion of PSC at three international sites using a common automation platform and a single process engineering team, simulating manufacture of cell therapies for global markets.

Project 3 – Provides further links with intra- and inter-hub projects and with Prof. Pete Coffey and his team at UCL who hold a UKRMP Stage II Disease/ System Award for retinal repair. This project aims to address the potential consequences of gains in chromosome 20 genetic material in undifferentiated hPSC for the safety and efficacy of disease relevant cell types, such as dopaminergic neurons, Retinal Pigment Epithelial cells and hepatocytes.