UK/Israeli Join Efforts to Develop Stem Cell Therapies for Lung Disease

Science|Business, May 16, 2007

Aimed at developing cell therapies for lung regeneration and repair, Israeli and UK stem cell specialists announced collaborative efforts today.

Working with clinicians at the UK based Papworth Hospital, the Israeli Gamida Cell and the UK NovaThera Ltd. will combine their expertise and technology. For tissue regeneration and the treatment of blood diseases, Gamida uses proprietary technologies to expand the populations of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells for the development of therapeutics from cord blood. Applications for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine by applying stem cell biology and bio-materials is the specialty of NovaThera.

Using cord blood stem cells that have been expanded with Gamida’s stem/progenitor cell expansion technologies, clinical tests will be performed by the scientists at Papworth.

Julia Polak, founder of NovaThera, from Imperial College London and an expert in lung disease said that, “this is a very exciting development, and could be a huge step towards a practical approach to the regeneration and repair of lungs severely damaged by incurable diseases such as emphysema and smoking."