MEDIPOST announced on the 17th of this month that it has been granted the US patent for a composition for treating lung diseases using stem cells.
The patent is entitled ‘Pharmaceutical composition for the prevention or treatment of a pulmonary disorder comprising mesenchymal stem cells with an improved proliferation and differentiation capacity’ whereby the claims demonstrate the possibility of treating the lung disease by using mesenchymal stem cells selectively culture-expanded based on their sizes.
MEDIPOST’s patent application under the same name was granted in Korea in 2016, and a company official said that they “plan to expand the scope of the application to the cells produced by MEDIPOST’s new SMUP-Cell platform technology confirming the various efficacy measures of the SMUP-Cells, which will become the next-generation pipeline of stem cell therapy products.”
SMUP-Cell is the next-generation platform technology which enables efficient mass production of stem cells by applying a culture method that selects only the small-sized and highly-efficient stem cells while maintaining the stem cell’s therapeutic capacity.
MEDIPOST has filed an application to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety(MFDS) Korea, for the first-in-human Phase 1 clinical trial of an injectable cell therapeutic (code named SMUP-IA-01) for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis which uses SMUP-Cell platform technology.
A MEDIPOST official said, “we will be able to cultivate highly efficient cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells with the SMUP-Cell platform technology,” and added that “through this, we will establish a strong foothold to enter the global stem cell therapy market, including mass production and the extension on the shelf-life of our stem cell products.”
The research work led to the patents has been supported by the Ministry of Health and Welfare for five years since 2012, through the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Consortium Project Grant.
