Optimising secretion of therapeutically active proteins from stem cells

Regenerative cell therapies offer enormous promise for the effective treatment of multiple indications such as heart disease, stroke and neurodegenerative disease. It is increasingly clear that many types of stem cell exert their therapeutic effect through secretion of trophic and immunomodulatory factors rather than by direct integration and tissue regeneration. However, stem cell culture conditions have not been optimised to maximise secretion of these key factors, potentially severely limiting clinical efficacy. We propose to test the feasibility of utilising our high throughput cell culture platform, Combicult, to identify optimal media formulations that increase secretion of trophic factors from stem cells and therefore impove therapeutic outcome.