InVitria stem cell technology to be highlighted in Journal of Biotechnology

By: InnovatioNews Tuesday January 7, 2014 Tags: ExpressTec, Fort Collins, InVitria, Randall Alfano, Ventria Bioscience

FORT COLLINS - InVitria, a division of Ventria Bioscience, announced the publication of new research demonstrating InVitria's animal-component-free recombinant human leukemia inhibitory factor (rhLIF) is comparable to traditional sources of recombinant LIF for the maintenance of pluripotent mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in culture.

Because ESCs have the potential to differentiate into cells of any type, they have been the focus of intense interest as possible new treatments for incurable diseases, InVitria said.

But maintenance of mouse or human ESCs in culture requires highly specialized bioreagents, which are expensive to produce and represent an economic barrier to commercial-scale development of ESC-based therapies.

InVitria's parent company, Ventria Bioscience, has developed ExpressTec, a highly efficient method for producing rhLIF in a plant-based expression system that is free of animal components and suitable for use with human and mouse ESCs, InVitria said.

"It is estimated that up to 90 percent of the cost of maintaining stem cell cultures can be attributed to the cost of LIF, and that makes cost-effective commercial scale-up very challenging," said Randall Alfano, InVitria cell culture scientist.

"This paper formally establishes that recombinant human LIF produced by the ExpressTec system has the same activity as LIF produced in Escherichia coli or other sources, making it a significantly more cost-effective option for both exploratory experimentation and production-scale stem cell cultures."

The publication was a collaboration between researchers at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and scientists with InVitria and Ventria Bioscience.

The paper will be published in the Journal of Biotechnology in early 2014, InVitria said.

The full text is now available online.