Cells for Cells: US patent granted for bioinspired grafts. An accelerator for the transition from medical research to medical practice ?

Santiago (Chile), 22 June 2020 – Cells for Cells, a cell therapy- and tissue engineering- focused company, announces that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted the company a US patent covering the AUTOMATED FABRICATION OF LAYER-BY-LAYER TISSUE ENGINEERED COMPLEX TUBES (US20180304502).

The approval now legally protects this invention which details a new strategy to fabricate advanced tissue engineered conduits for diverse applications intended to treat major medical conditions that affect millions of people worldwide. Moreover, this new intellectual property milestone positions the Chilean company at the forefront of developing innovative technology to address the critical need for vascular graft.

In particular, the novel approach comprises the use of a robot that can achieve precise geometrical, mechanical and biological personalization of tissue-like conduits thanks to the controlled and automated deposition at high resolution of biomaterials, nanofibers and cells in a unique and rapid one-step fabrication procedure. The personalized tubes manufactured through this patented technology possess a multilayer structure that resembles the anatomy of tissue conduits that are replaced in the treatment of a multitude of different pathologies. Examples of applications that can benefit from these novel tissue conduits include arteries and veins, urethra and intestinal tissues.

Typically, the production of Tissue Engineered Products requires multiple steps that go from scaffold fabrication to cell seeding, maturation in bioreactors, and, ultimately, packaging, making the manufacturing of such solutions a long and inefficient process, which is, moreover, expensive and difficult to standardize. These manufacturing issues have been pointed out in the last years as the main drawbacks that are keeping advanced tissue engineered medical solutions commercially unfeasible and away from the clinical reality.

Aware of the aforementioned challenges, the Cells for Cells team led by Juan Pablo Acevedo, Director of the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Unit, has worked to bring these tubular grafts closer to patients via the newly patented manufacturing approach. This allows for scalable tissue conduits to be ready to implant in less than an hour with guaranteed standardization and quality. The approach, which has been highlighted in prominent peer-reviewed scientific journals (Akentjew et al., Nature Communications, 2019), solved for the first time technical and commercial issues of the field and makes possible the quick manufacturing of very-needed tissue conduits near the point of treatment.

Cells for Cells
Santiago, Chile

Contact information:
Maroun Khoury
mkhoury@c4c.cl
+56 2 2 61819562
2500 Av. Plaza,
Las Condes, Santiago, Chile

About Cells for Cells
Cells for Cells is a Chilean biotech company dedicated to the research, development and commercialization of innovative cellular therapies, complying with high standards of scientific, technological and international quality, through manufacturing processes certified under ISO 9001: 2015. Each therapy is produced in our labs with GMP standards, being the first biotech company, with such high-quality standards in the Latin American region.

This release was published on openPR.