New Products to Advance Research on Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Online, June 19, 2012 (Newswire.com) - STEMCELL Technologies Inc. (STEMCELL) announced today its plans to release a series of new products to advance research and translational applications for human pluripotent stem cells.

These novel products, which will be launched at the International Society for Stem Cell Research 2012 Conference in Japan, include:

TeSR™-E8™: a highly defined feeder-free culture medium for human embryonic stem cells (ES cells) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). TeSR-E8 contains only the most essential 8 components required for maintenance of ES cells and iPS cells, providing a simpler medium for the culture of pluripotent stem cells. It is based on the E8 formulation published in Nature Methods (G. Chen et al., Nature Methods 8, 424 (2011)). This lab previously developed the mTeSR™1 and TeSR™2 feeder-free culture media, which were licensed and commercialized by STEMCELL Technologies and are now the most widely-published feeder-free culture media for human pluripotent stem cells. TeSR-E8 can be used with a surface coating of BD Matrigel™ hESC-qualified Matrix or vitronectin, as described in this publication. It will be available for purchase in September 2012 under the license agreement that STEMCELL has with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).

STEMdiff™ Definitive Endoderm / Cardiomyocyte / Hematopoietic kits: the STEMdiff product line is significantly expanded with the world's first complete commercial kits for directed hPSC differentiation to definitive endoderm, cardiomyocyte and hematopoietic lineages. These new kits will be available for purchase in October 2012. STEMdiff products provide robust reagents and protocols to reliably differentiate hPSC to various lineages and are optimized for use with mTeSR™1 and TeSR™2 feeder-free culture media.

"We are delighted to build on our track record for providing high quality cell culture media to stem cell scientists, by introducing new products that work as an integrated system," said Dr. Allen Eaves, CEO and President of STEMCELL Technologies. "We are excited to give scientists products that are designed to work together and extend from reprogramming through to differentiation."

By adding TeSR-E8 and the new STEMdiff kits to its portfolio, STEMCELL Technologies continues to provide the most complete, defined system of integrated tools for human pluripotent stem cell research. These high-quality reagents for defined pluripotent cell culture increase experimental reproducibility, eliminate variable biologic elements in the culture media and increase clinical relevance for culture of ES cells and iPS cells.