Commercialisation of Fully-Automated iPSC Manufacturing System

In 2006, Prof. Shinya Yamanaka discovered a method by which one could turn back the developmental clock of a cell through converting a skin cell into a stem cell -- a cell that is capable of becoming any kind of cell in the body. He called this transformed cells induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) -- 'pluripotent' meaning capable of becoming any cell in the body.

This revolutionary discovery made it possible to take a skin cell from any donor, and use it to produce any other cell in the body, such as heart or brain cells. This has been a critical breakthrough for drug development, because drugs can now be tested against cells that would have previously required intrusive biopsies to retrieve them from inside a patient, such as heart or brain cells.

Today, a big limitation in the adoption of iPSCs has been that they require a lot of manual labour and specialised technique to grow, compared to other kinds of cells.

In this project, we will launch an automated machine for growing iPSCs, to make them much easier to grow and drive their adoption.