A reproducible, physiologically relevant cellular model of human microglia for neurodegenerative disease drug discovery and development
Cambridge, UK – (6th December 2018) – Axol Bioscience, the human cell culture specialist, is launching a new line of Human induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC)-derived Microglia for the consistent and reproducible study of neuroglia and their involvement in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
Microglia are commonly described as the immune cells of the brain. Human iPSC-derived Microglia offer scientists the opportunity to integrate this clinically important cell type into their in vitro models and assays of neurogenesis and neurodegeneration. Axol generates physiologically relevant Human iPSC-derived Microglia from a single donor with a normal karyotype, providing a homogenous population that is assay-ready in just four days.
“The variability associated with traditional microglia cell lines, together with limited availability, poses significant challenges for pharmaceutical and biotech companies developing novel therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative diseases,” said Yichen Shi, Chief Executive Officer, Axol Bioscience. “The launch of Axol’s Human iPSC-derived Microglia will provide scientists with a reproducible, physiologically relevant model in an easy-to-use, assay-ready format for investigating neuroglia involvement in neurodegeneration and neurodevelopment.”
“The iPSC-derived Microglia from Axol were perfect for our live cell analysis research,” said Dr Gillian Lovell, Senior Scientist, Essen Bioscience (part of the Sartorius Group). “Displaying ramified and amoeboid morphologies, the cells were robust and highly active in functional assays, exhibiting phagocytosis of particles, apoptotic cells and aggregated peptides. With the continued excellent scientific support, we look forward to expanding our neuroscience applications with Axol’s cells.”
The homogenous and reproducible population of the Human iPSC-derived Microglia exhibits physiologically relevant functionality with highly phagocytic activity and secretion of cytokines in response to pathogens. Axol’s Human iPSC-derived Microglia also express the microglia-specific marker Transmembrane protein 119 (TMEM119) along with myeloid markers Triggering Receptor Expressed on Myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) and Ionised Calcium Binding Adaptor molecule-1 (IBA-1). The expression of these phenotypes means the Microglia provide a suitable model for investigating neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
For more information on Axol’s Human iPSC-derived Microglia, please follow the link.
About Axol Bioscience
Axol Bioscience, the human cell culture specialist, provide highly validated iPSC-derived cells together with optimised media and growth supplements. Through the supply of differentiated cells derived from healthy donors and patients of specific disease backgrounds, Axol aims to provide tools for building the best human cell-based disease models and assays to advance biomedical research and drug discovery.
Combining our passion for science with quality, innovation and customer service, we deliver the robust and reliable products our customers need to advance their research faster. To find out more, get in touch today at support@axolbio.com
How can human iPSC-derived Renal PTCs enhance drug development?
The major functional unit of the kidney (the nephron) largely relies on proximal tubular cells (PTCs), which are a key target for toxic pharmaceutical agents. A recent study has demonstrated the potential of hiPSC-derived renal PTCs in the assessment of nephrotoxicity. They evidently show great promise as a tool for accurately predicting human drug-induced nephrotoxicity in drug development, which conventional animal models are unable to do. This will help to decrease costs and risks during clinical trials, ensure regulatory compliance, and better protect patient health.
The hiPSC-derived PTCs recently developed by Axol are ready to use at the bench just four days after thawing. These cells will not only help to enhance the efficiency of your nephrotoxicity testing processes, but they can also offer a supply of high-quality, physiologically relevant cells to generate highly predictive nephrotoxicity assays essential to drug development.
Human iPSC-derived Renal Cells: Key applications and future opportunities
As well as being able to accurately predict nephrotoxicity, hiPSC-derived Renal PTCs could bring various other benefits to compound screening and drug development. This includes the ability to identify underlying injury mechanisms and drug-induced cellular pathways to inform therapeutic breakthroughs.
HiPSC-derived Renal PTCs are suitable for automated cellular imaging, so they could enable the efficient analysis of larger numbers of compounds. There are also exciting opportunities to use hiPSC-derived Renal PTCs in the development of novel personalized therapies and disease-specific in vitro models for compound screening and nephrotoxicity prediction .
The potential applications of hiPSC-derived Renal PTCs go beyond drug screening. A recent breakthrough is the generation of hiPSC-derived self-organising kidney tissue-like structures and kidney organoids in vitro , which is causing great excitement with respect to applications in kidney-related regenerative medicine and renal disease modelling , as well as in nephrotoxicology. Human iPSC-derived renal PTCs could also potentially solve some of the biggest problems with bioartificial kidneys , such as the identification of a reliable source for large numbers of PTCs that have a reproducible high quality.
Kidney disease research and drug development has previously relied on animal models that cannot recapitulate the normal function of human renal cells. As a result, our understanding of underlying disease mechanisms and therapeutic breakthroughs has been limited – until now.
With the recent emergence of hiPSC-derived renal PTCs, researchers now have access to physiologically relevant human cells and tissues to advance various applications, including nephrotoxicity screening during drug development.
Axol’s ready to use hiPSC-derived Renal PTCs now offer an efficient way of establishing in vitro toxicity screening platforms with a high predictivity and reproducibility to expedite and enhance your drug development research.
