Tuesday, November 23, 2010

No. 197: Build the regeneration medicine market (November 24, 2010)

The moves of bio ventures to put their technologies of regeneration medicine into practical use get a boost. Japan Tissue Engineering, a group company of Fujifilm Holdings, will build Japan’s first mass production system of cultured cartilages used to regenerate the cartilage of knee joint in Japan by next fall. CellSeeds will apply for the permit to produce and sell cultured corneal used to generate the corneal damaged by burn and disease in Europe next year. Japan Tissue’s technology is to implant the cultured cartilage whose cells contain jellylike collagen in the diseased part to regenerate the cartilage. Being jellylike, the cultured cartilage is easily settled in the diseased part. The permit to produce and sell the cultured cartilage is being examined by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. CellSeeds will market the cultured corneal throughout Europe starting in 2012 after obtaining the permit of production and sales. CellSeeds’ technology is to produce epithelium of corneal by culturing cells collected from the mucosa of a patient’s mouth and implant the cultured corneal to the patient. CellSeeds’ product is expected to have less rejection response to immunity because it uses the cells of a patient. At present, the skin regeneration technology developed by Japan Tissue Engineering is the only one regeneration technology permitted in Japan. Some estimate that the regeneration medicine market will grow to 1,000 billion yen worldwide in a few years.

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