This contract, the first from a major US pharmaceutical company for MultiCell, allows Bristol-Myers Squibb to grow and use MultiCell’s immortalized Fa2N-4 hepatocytes for internal testing purposes. MultiCell’s patented immortalized non-tumorigenic human hepatocytes are screening tools for pharmaceutical lead candidate optimization.
“This agreement represents an important validation of the value of our non-tumorigenic human hepatocytes in the drug development process,” said Dr Stephen Chang, MultiCell’s president. “We expect that as use of MultiCell’s functional immortalized hepatocytes in testing drug candidates increases, we will help the industry lower drug development costs and ultimately help protect the public from the possible dangers of recalled drugs.”
MultiCell’s non-tumorigenic functional hepatic (liver) cells and cell lines are useful to pharmaceutical companies for induction studies and toxicity screening for drug discovery because hepatocytes express drug-metabolizing enzymes, which bio-transform drugs or substances ingested into the body, helping indicate possible reactions to the human liver.
Drug failures or FDA rejections due to hepatotoxicity and/or drug-drug interactions now cost the pharmaceutical industry about $2 billion each year. Estimated costs to develop and test a new medicine are $900 million.
MultiCell’s cellular product expertise also enables production of biologics for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, production of liver-derived therapeutic proteins and human liver stem cells.