Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), a Fujifilm company, said it will co-market its suite of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived human tissue with Nanion Technologies’ instrument platforms for ion channel drug discovery and screening, through an agreement whose value was not disclosed.
Under the companies’ agreement, participating research customers will receive Nanion’s CardioExcyte® 96 instrument in conjunction with a supply and participation agreement with CDI for a one-year period. Nanion agreed to provide on-site training for CardioExcyte 96 use, while CDI agreed to offer iPSC-derived differentiated cells.
At the conclusion of the one-year period, customers can either renew their contract, or purchase the CardioExcyte 96 at a depreciated market value. CDI and Nanion said they expect to continue to develop and expand the suite of co-developed applications they are offering through the program.
“This program increases testing equipment availability while enabling researchers to take full advantage of the benefits provided by CDI’s human iPSC-derived tissue specific cells,” Bruce Novich, Sc.D., division president, CNBD, Fujifilm Holdings America and division president-life sciences for CDI, said in a statement. “The net result across the research community will be greater access to better tools with more rapid generation of impactful results.”
CDI markets two lines of human iPSC-derived products. iCell®, derived from apparently healthy donors, includes human cardiac, neural, hepatic, musculoskeletal, and hematopoietic lineages. MyCell® products are manufactured from both healthy donors and donors with specific disease genotypes and phenotypes across nine different human cell types. The company manufactures cells at commercial quantities, cryopreserved and inventoried for immediate off-the-shelf availability.
CardioExcyte 96—the number stands for the 96 wells from which the instrument can record at a time—is designed to measure electrical activity as well as cell movement and changes in morphology. The instrument is intended for basic research, toxicity testing, and therapeutic development focused on measurements that include cardiac function, cell attachment, spreading and proliferation, quantification of cell behavior in a confluent layer, barrier function, and quality of cell–cell and cell–substrate adhesions.
According to Nanion, CardioExcyte 96 has been validated with stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes from CDI, and several other providers, including Axiogenesis, Pluriomics, Takara Bio Europe, and GE Healthcare, as well as with 3D clusters from Takara Bio Europe.
“CDI produces many cell types central to these endpoints and we are excited to launch this combined effort that bundles and increases access to these technologies,” added Niels Fertig, Nanion’s founder and CEO.